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208624 


PREFATORY  NOTE 

These  studies  in  the  gradual  development  of 
the  moral  substitutes  for  war  have  been  made  in 
the  industrial  quarter  of  a  cosmopolitan  city  where 
the  morality  exhibits  marked  social  and  interna- 
tional aspects. 

Parts  of  two  chapters  have  been  published  be- 
fore in  the  form  of  addresses,  and  two  others  as 
articles  in  the  North  American  Review  and  in  the 
American  Journal  of  Sociology,  All  of  them 
however  are  held  together  by  a  conviction  that 
has  been  maturing  through  many  years. 

Hull-House, 
Chicago. 


vii 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER  I 


Introduction 

Newer  ideals  of  peace  are  dynamic;  if  made  opera- 
tive will  do  away  with  war  as  a  natural  process  3 

Of  the  older  ideals  the  appeal  to  pity  is  dogmatic   .  4 

The  appeal  to  the  sense  of  prudence  also  dogmatic 

and  at  this  moment  seems  impotent     ...  5 

Outlook  for  universal  peace  by  international  arbitra- 
tion  6 

I  Primitive  and  profound  impulses  operate  against  im- 
pulse to  war   .  8 

Appeal  to  pity  and  prudence  unnecessary  if  the  cos- 
mopolitan interest  in  human  affairs  is  utilized    .  9 

Social  morality  originates  in  social  affections     .      .  ii 

Emotion  determines  social  relations  in  the  poorer 

quarters  of  a  cosmopolitan  city     ....  13 

New  immigrants  develop  phenomenal  powers  of  as- 

sociation  14 

Their  ideal  of  government  includes  kindliness  as 

well  as  protection  ,15 

Crowded  city  quarters  the  focal  point  of  governmental  ^ 
progress   •      •  16 

Life  at  these  points  must  shape  itself  with  reference 

to  the  demands  of  social  justice  ....  17 

Simple  foundations  laid  there  for  an  international 

order  18 

Ideals  formed  "in  the  depth  of  anonymous  life"  make 

for  realization  20 

Impulses  toward  .compassionate  conduct  imperative   .  21 

The  internationalism  of  good  wiU  foreseen  by  the 

philosopher      .      .      ...      .      .      .  23 

ix 


CONTENTS 


A  quickening  concern  for  human  welfare;  inter- 
national aspects  illustrated  by  world-wide  efforts 
to  eradicate  tuberculosis,  first  signs  of  the  sub- 
stitution of  nurture  for  warfare     .      .      .      •    '  25 

This  substitution  will  be  a  natural  process  ...  26 

Our  very  hope  for  it,  a  surrender  to  the  ideals  of  the 

humble   27 

Accounting  must  be  taken  between  survivals  of  mili- 
tarism and  manifestations  of  newer  humanitarian- 
ism   .28 

Tendency  to  idealization  marked  eighteenth-century 

humanitarian  29 

Newer  ideals   of  this  century  sustained  only  by 

knowledge  and  companionship     .      .      .      .  30 

CHAPTER  II 


Survivals  of  Militarism  in  City  Government 

American  Republic  founded  under  the  influence  of 
doctrinaire  eighteenth-century  ideals.  Failure  in 
municipal  administration  largely  due  to  their  in- 
adequacy   

Modern  substitutes  of  the  evolutionary  conception  of 
progress  for  eighteenth-century  idealism 

Failure  of  adjustment  between  the  old  form  of  gov- 
ernment and  present  condition  results  in  rever- 
sion to  military  and  legal  type     .      .      .  . 

National  governmental  machinery  provides  no  vehicle 
for  organized  expression  of  popular  will  . 

Historic  governments  dependent  upon  force  of  arms 

Founders  placed  too  exclusive  a  value  upon  the 
principles  defended  by  the  War  of  the  Revolu- 
tion. Example  '  of  the  overestimation  of  the 
spoils  of  war        .      .      .      •  • 

Immigration  problem  an  illustration  of  the  failure 
to  treaj;  our  growing  Republic  in  a  spirit  of  pro- 
gressive and  developing  democracy 

Present  immigration  due  partly  to  the  philosophic 
dogmas  of  the  eighteenth-century.  Theory  of 
naturalization  still  rests  upon  those  dogmas  ,  * 

X 


31  ( 
32 

34 

35 

36 

S7 

f 

39 
40 


CONTENTS 


No  adequate  formulization  of  newer  philosophy  al- 
though immigration  situation  has  become  much 
more  industrial  than  political       .      .      .      ,  ^42 

Exploitation  of  immigrants  carried  on  under  guise  of  "^'^^ 
preparation  for  citizenship  46 

Failure  to  develop  a  government  fitted  to  varied  . 

peoples  48 

Attitude  of  contempt  for  immigrant  survival  of  a 

spirit  of  conqueror  toward  inferior  people    .       .  49 

Contempt  reflected  by  children  toward  immigrant 

parents  ^50 

Universal  franchise  implies  a  recognition  of  social 

needs  and  ideals   .  52 

Difficulties  of  administering  repressive  government  in 

a  democracy  ^4 

The  attempt  inevitably  develops  the  corrupt  politician 

as  a  friend  of  the  vicious  56 

He  must  be  followed  by  successive  reformers  who 

represent  the  righteous  and  protect  tax  interests  57 

Illustration  from  the  point  of  view  of  humble  people  58 

Dramatic  see-saw  must  continue  until  we  attain  the 

ideals  of  an  evolutionary  democracy     ...  59 

Community  divided  into  repressive  and  repressed,. 

representing  conqueror  and  conquered  .       .      T  60 

CHAPTER  HI 
Failure  to  Utilize  Immigrants  in  City  Gk)VERNMENT 

Democratic  governments  must  reckon  with  the  un- 
successful if  only  because  they  represent  majority 
of  citizens  52 

To  demand  protection  from  unsuccessful  is  to  fail 

in  self-government   '63 

Study  of  immigrants  might  develop  result  in  revived  ^  / 
enthusiasm  for  human  possibilities  reacting  upon  « 
ideals   of  government  64 

Social  resources  of  immigrants  wasted  through  want  / 
of  recognition  of  old  habits      .      .      .  '  6$ 

xi 


CONTENTS 


Illustrated  by  South  Italians'  ability  to  combine  com- 
munity life  with  agricultural  occupations,  which 

is   disregarded  -66 

Anglo-Saxon  distrust  of  experiments  with  land  tenure 

and  taxation  illustrated  by  Doukhobors      .      .  67 
Immigrant's  contribution  to  city  life       .      .      .  69/^ 
Military  ideals  blind  statesmen  to  connection  between 

social  life  and  government  .  .  .  •  '  /^^ 
Corrupt  politician  who  sees  the  connection  often  first  \  ^ 

friend  of  immigrant  7i 

Real  statesmen  would  work  out  scheme  of  natural- 
ization founded  upon  social  needs      .      .      .  7^ 
Intelligent  co-operation  of  immigrants  necessary  for 

advancing  social  legislation  74 

Daily  experience  of  immigrants  not  to  be  ignored  as 

basis  of  patriotism  '  ^ 

Lack  of  cosmopolitan  standard  widens  gulf  between 

immigrant  parents  and  children    .      .      .      .  7^ 
Government  is  developing  most  rapidly  in  its  relation  ^ 
to  the  young  criminal  and  to  the  poor  and  de-  ^ 

pendent   »      •      •  79 

Denver  Juvenile  Court  is  significant  in  its  attitude 

toward  repressive  government    ....  81 
Good  education  in  reform  schools  indicates  compunc- 
tion on  the  part  of  the  State  .      .      .      .      .  ^3 
Government  functions  extended  to  care  of  defectives 

and  dependents  •  84 

Ignores  normal  needs  of  every  citizen  .      .      .      •  8$ 
Socialists  would  meet  the  needs  of  workingmen  by 
socialized  legislation,  but  refuse  to  deal  with  the 

present  state  •      •      •  ^ 

At  present  radical  changes  must  come  from  forces  ^  j/ 

outside  life  of  the  people      .  •      •  ^ 

Imperial  governments  are  now  concerning  themselves 

with  primitive  essential  needs  of  workingmen  .  ^ 
Republics  restrict  functions  of  the  government  .      .  .90 
Is  America,  in  clinging  to  eighteenth-century  tradi-  / 
tions,  losing  its  belief  in  the  average  man?  .     y  9i 
xii 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER  IV 
Militarism  and  Industrial  Legislation 

American  cities  slow  to  consider  immigration  in  re- 
lation to  industry    .      .      .      .      .      .      •  93 

Working-men  alone  must  regard  them  in  relation 

to  industrial  situations    .      .      .      .      .      •  94 

Assimilation  of  immigrants  by  workingman  due  both 

to  economic  pressure  and  to  idealism   ...  95 

Illustrated  by  Stock  Yards  Strike      ....  96 

And  by  the  strike  in  Anthracite  Coal  Fields    ,      .  97 

In  the  latter  aroused  public  opinion  forced  Federal 

Government  to  deal  with  industrial  conditions    .  98 

In  complicated  modern  society  not  always  easy  to 

see  where  social  order  lies  loi 

Chicago  Stock  Yards  Strike  illustrates  such  a  situa- 
tion .  .104 

Government  should  have  gained  the  enthusiasm  im- 
migrants gave  to  union  .     .      .     , .      .  .107 

War  element  an  essential  part  of  strike    .      .    ^  .  109 

Appeal  to  loyalty  the  nearest  approach  to  a  moral 
appeal   

Reluctance  of  United  States  Government  to  recognize 

matters  of  industry  as  germane  to  government  .  112 

Resulting  neglect  of  civic  duty  ii3 

The  working-man's  attitude  toward  war  as  expressed 

by  his  international  organization  .      .      •      •  lU 

Commerce  the  modern  representative  of  conquest   .  116 

Standard  of  life  should  be  the  test  of  a  nation's  pros- 
perity, so  recognized  by  workingmen   .      -  .117 
Social  amelioration  undertaken  by  those  in  closest 

contact  with  social  maladjustments      .      •  .118 
Present  difficulties  in  social  reform  will  continue 
until  class  interests  are  subordinated  to  a  broader 
conception  of  social  progress    .      .  .119 
If  self-government  were  inaugurated  by  advanced 
thinkers  now,  they  would  make  research  into 
early  forms  of  industrial  governments    .      .  121 
xiii 


CONTENTS 


Autocratic  European  governments  have  recognized 

workingman's  need  of  protection  ....  122 
Has  Democracy  a  right  to  refuse  this  protection?   .  •  123 

CHAPTER  V 

Group  Morality  in  the  Labor  Movement 

Industrial  changes  which  belong  to  the  community 
as  a  whole  have  unfortunately  divided  it  into 


two  camps  124 

These  are  typified  by  Employers'  Associations  and 

Trades  Unions  each  developing  a  group  morality  125 

Trade  Unions  at  present  illustrate  the  eternal  com- 
promise between  the  inner  concept  and  the  outer 
act  127 

Present  moment  one  of  crisis  in  Trades  Union  de- 
velopment  128 

Newly  organized  unions  in  war  state  of  development 

responsible  for  serious  mistakes   ....  130 

Tacit  admission  that  a  strike  is  war  made  during  the 

Teamsters*  Strike  in  Chicago  in  1905    .      .      .  132 

Temporary  loss  of  belief  in  industrial  arbitration    .  134 

Teamsters'  Strike  not  adjudicated  in  court  threw  the 

entire  city  into  state  of  warfare    .      .      .       .  136 

New    organizations    of    employers    exhibit  traits 

of  militant  youth    .      .      .      .      .      .      .  138 

Public  although  powerless  to  intervene,  sees  grave 

social  consequences  140 

Division  of  cox^.^^mity  into  classes;  increase  of  race 

animosity;  spirit  of  materialism   ....  141 

Class  prejudice  created  among  children  still  another 

social  consequence         .      .      .      .      .      .  142 

Disastrous  effect  of  prolonged  warfare  upon  the 

labor  movement  itself  144 

Real  effort  of  trades  unions  at  present  is  for  recogni- 
tion of  the  principle  of  collective  bargaining    .  145 

Trades  unions  are  forced  to  correct  industrial  ills 

inherent  in  the  factory  system  itself   ...  146 

Illustration  from  limitation  of  output  ....  147 
xiv 


CONTENTS 


Illustration  from  attitude  towards  improved  ma- 
chinery   

Disregard  of  the  machine  as  a  social  product  makes 
for  group  morality  on  the  part  of  the  owner  and 
employees  

Contempt  resulting  from  group"  morality  justifies 
method  of  warfare  

CHAPTER  VI 

Protection  of  Children  for  Industrial  Efficiency 
Deficiency  in  protective  legislation 
Contempt  for  immigrant  because  of  his 'economic 

standing  

National  indifference  to  condition  of  working  children 
Temptation  to  use  child  labor  peculiar  to  this  in- 
dustrial epoch  .... 
Our  sensibilities  deadened  by  familiarity 


Protection  of  the  young  the  concern  of  government  S 
tffect  of  premature  labor  on  the  child  .  i^S 
Effect  of  child  labor  on  the  family  .  .  '  t6i 
Effect  on  the  industrial  product  t6 
Effect  on  civilization  ^(^ 
Intelligent  labor  the  most  valuable  asset  of  our  in-     ^  ^ 

dustrial  prosperity 
Results  of  England's  foreign  commercial  policy  ." 
Lack  of  consistency  in  the  relation  of  the  state  to  the 

child  in  the  United  States  .... 
Failure  of  public  school  system  to  connect  with 

present  industrial  development  ...  jg; 
Correlation  of  new  education  with  industrial  situation  i68 
Child  labor  legislation  will  secure  to  child  its  proper 

play  period  ... 
Power  of  association  developed  through  play 
Co-operation,  not  coercion,  the  ideal  factory  discipline 
Actual  factory  system  divorced  from  the  instinct  of 

workmanship  .... 
The  activity  of  youth  should  be  'valuable  assets  for 
citizenship  as  well  as  industry  , 

XV 


I4S 

149 
150 

154 


155 
155 


164 
165 

166 


169 
171 
173 

174 

175 


CONTENTS 


Military  survivals  in  city  government  destroys  this 

asset   176 

The  gang  a  training  school  for  group  morality.  I77 
Concern  of  modern  government  in  the  development 

of  its  citizens  .179 

CHAPTER  VII 
Utilization  of  Women  in  City  Government 

The  modern  city  founded  upon  military  ideals      .  180 

Early  franchise  justly  given  to  grown  men  on  basis 

of  military  duty  181 

This  early  test  no  longer  fitted  to  the  modern  city 

whose  problems  are  internal       ....  182 

Women's  experience  in  household  details  valuable  to 
civic  housekeeping.  No  method  of  making  it 
available  •      •  184 

Municipal  suffrage  to  be  regarded  not  as  a  right  or  a 
privilege,  but  as  a  piece  of  governmental  ma- 
chinery  •      •  187 

Franchise  not  only  valuable  as  exercised  by  educated 
women,  matters  to  be  decided  upon  too  basic 
to  be  influenced  by  modern  education   .      .      .  188 

Census  of  1900  shows  greater  increase  of  working- 
women  than  of  men  and  increasing  youth  of 
working  women      .  189 

Concerted  action  of  women  necessary  to  bring  about 

industrial  protection       .      .      .      .      .  .191 

Women  can  control  surroundings  of  their  work  only 

by  means  of  franchise    ......  192 

Unfair  to  put  task  of  industrial  protection  upon 

women's  trades  unions  as  it  often  confuses  issues  194 

Closer  connection  between  industry  and  government 

would  result  if  working  women  were  enfranchised  196 

Failure  to  educate  women  to  industrial  life  disastrous 

to  industry  itself  and  to  women  as  employers     .  I97 

Situation  must  be  viewed  in  relation  to  recent  im- 


migration and  in  connection  with  present  stage  , 
of  factory  system  in  America    .      .      .  .199 
xvi 


NEWER  IDEALS  OF  PEACE 


CHAPTER  I 


INTRODUCTION 

The  following  pages  present  the  claims  of  the 
newer,  more  aggressive  ideals  of  peace,  as  over 
against  the  older  dovelike  ideal.    These  newer 
ideals  are  active  and  dynamic,  and  it  is  believed 
that  if  their  forces  were  made  really  operative 
upon  society,  they  would,  in  the  end,  quite  as  a 
natural  process,  do  away  with  war.    The  older 
ideals  have  required  fostering  and  recruiting,  and 
have  been  held  and  promulgated  on  the  basis  of 
a  creed.    Their  propaganda  has  been  carried 
forward  during  the  last  century  in  nearly  all 
civilized  countries  by  a  small  body  of  men  who 
have  never  ceased  to  cry  out  against  war  and  its 
iniquities  and  who  have  preached  the  doctrines 
of  peace  along  two  great  lines.    The  first  has 
been  the  appeal  to  the  higher  imaginative  pity,  as 
it  is  found  in  the  modern,  moralized  man.  This 
line  has  been  most  effectively  followed  by  two 
Russians,  Count  Tolstoy  in  his  earlier  writings 
and  Verestchagin  in  his  paintings.     With  his 
relentless  power  of  reducing  all  life  to  personal 
3 


NEWER  IDEALS   OF  PEACE 

experience  Count  Tolstoy  drags  us  through  the 
campaign  of  the  common  soldier  in  its  sordidness 
and  meanness  and  constant  sense  of  perplexity. 
We  see  nothing  of  the  glories  we  have  associated 
with  warfare,  but  learn  of  it  as  it  appears  to  the 
untutored  peasant  who  goes  forth  at  the  mandate 
of  his  superior  to  sufifer  hunger,  cold,  and  death 
for  issues  which  he  does  not  understand,  which, 
indeed,  can  have  no  moral  significance  to  him. 
Verestchagin  covers  his  canvas  with  thousands 
of  wretched  wounded  and  neglected  dead,  with 
the  waste,  cruelty,  and  squalor  of  war,  until  he 
forces  us  to  question  whether  a  moral  issue  can 
ever  be  subserved  by  such  brutal  methods. 

High  and  searching  as  is  the  preaching  of  these 
two  great  Russians  who  hold  their  art  of  no  ac- 
count save  as  it  serves  moral  ends,  it  is  still  the 
appeal  of  dogma,  and  may  be  reduced  to  a  com- 
mand to  cease  from  evil.  And  when  this  sam^ 
line  of  appeal  is  presented  by  less  gifted  men,  it 
often  results  in  mere  sentimentality,  totally  unen- 
forced by  a  call  to  righteousness. 

The  second  line  followed  by  the  advocates  of 
peace  in  all  countries  has  been  the  appeal  to  the 
sense  of  prudence,  and  this  again  has  found  its 
ablest  exponent  in  a  Russian  subject,  the  econo- 
mist and  banker,  Jean  de  Bloch.  He  sets  forth 
the  cost  of  warfare  with  pitiless  accuracy,  and 

4 


INTRODUCTION 


demonstrates  that  even  the  present  armed  peace 
is  so  costly  that  the  burdens  of  it  threaten  social 
revolution  in  almost  every  country  in  Europe. 
Long  before  the  reader  comes  to  the  end  of  de 
Bloch's  elaborate  computation  he  is  ready  to  cry 
out  on  the  inanity  of  the  proposition  that  the  only 
way  to  secure  eternal  peace  is  to  waste  so  much 
valuable  energy  and  treasure  in  preparing  for  war 
that  war  becomes  impossible.  Certainly  no 
theory  could  be  devised  which  is  more  cumber- 
some, more  roundabout,  more  extravagant,  than 
the  reductio  ad  absurdum  of  the  peace-secured- 
by-the-preparation-for-war  theory.  This  appeal 
to  prudence  was  constantly  emphasized  at  the 
first  Hague  Conference  and  was  shortly  after- 
ward demonstrated  by  Great  Britain  when  she 
went  to  war  in  South  Africa,  where  she  was  fined 
one  hundred  million  pounds  and  lost  ten  thousand 
lives.  The  fact  that  Russia  also,  and  the  very 
Czar  who  invited  the  Conference,  disregarded 
the  conclusions  of  the  Hague  Tribunal  makes 
this  line  of  appeal  at  least  for  the  moment  seem 
impotent  to  influence  empires  which  command 
enormous  resources  and  which  lodge  the  power 
of  expenditure  in  officials  who  have  nothing  to  do 
with  accumulating  the  treasure  they  vote  to  ex- 
pend. 

It  would,  however,  be  the  height  of  folly  for 
5 


NEWER  IDEALS   OF  PEACE 


responsible  statesmen  to  ignore  the  sane  methods 
of  international  discussion  and  concession  which 
have  been  evolved  largely  as  a  result  of  these 
appeals.    The  Interparliamentary  Union  for  In- 
ternational Arbitration  and  the  Institute  of  Inter- 
national Law  represent  the  untiring  efforts  of  the 
advocates  of  peace  through  many  years.  Never- 
theless universal  peace,  viewed  from  the  point  of 
the  World's  Sovereignty  or  of  the  Counsel  of  Na- 
tions, is  discouraging  even  when  stated  by  the 
most  ardent  promoters   of  the  peace  society. 
Here  it  is  quite  possible  that  the  mistake  is  being 
repeated  which  the  old  annalists  of  history  made 
when  they  never  failed  to  chronicle  the  wars  and 
calamities  which  harassed  their  contemporaries, 
although,  while  the  few  indulged  in  fighting,  the 
mass  of  them  peacefully  prosecuted  their  daily 
toil  and  followed  their  own  conceptions  of  kindli- 
ness and  equity.  An  English  writer  ^  has  recently 
bidden  us  to  look  at  the  actual  state  of  affairs 
existing  at   the   present   moment.     He  says, 
''Universal  and  permanent  peace  may  be  a  vision ; 
but  the  gradual  change  whereby  war,  as  a  normal 
state  of  international  relations,  has  given  place  to 
peace  as  the  normal  state,  is  no  vision,  but  an 
actual  process  of  history  palpably  forwarded  in 
our  own  day  by  the  development  of  international 

^L.  T.  Hobhouse,  Democracy  and  Reaction,  page  197, 
6 


INTRODUCTION 


law  and  of  morals,  and  voluntary  arbitration 
based  thereon/'  He  insists  that  it  is  the  function 
of  international  lawyers  merely  to  give  coherent 
expression  to  the  best  principles  which  the  com- 
mon moral  sense  of  civilized  Governments  recog- 
nizes ;  in  other  words,  that  international  law  should 
be  like  primitive  law  within  the  nation,  a  formal 
expression  of  custom  resting  on  the  sense  of  a 
reciprocal  restraint  which  has  been  found  to  be 
necessary  for  the  common  good. 

Assuming  that  the  two  lines  of  appeal — ^the 
one  to  sensibility  and  the  other  to  prudence — 
will  persist,  and  that  the  international  lawyers, 
in  spite  of  the  fact  that  they  have  no  court  before 
which  to  plead  and  no  executive  to  enforce  their 
findings,  will  continue  to  formulate  into  codes 
the  growing  moral  sense  of  the  nations,  the  fol- 
lowing pages  hope  not  only  to  make  clear  the 
contention  that  these  forces  within  society  are  so 
dynamic  and  vigorous  that  the  impulses  to  war 
seem  by  comparison  cumbersome  and  mechanical, 
but  also  to  point  out  the  development  of  those 
newer  social  forces  which  it  is  believed  will  at 
last  prove  a  "sovereign  intervention''  by  extin- 
guishing the  possibility  of  battle  at  its  very  source. 

It  is  difficult  to  formulate  the  newer  dynamic 
peace,  embodying  the  later  humanism,  as  over 
against  the  old  dogmatic  peace.    The  word 

7 


NEWER   IDEALS   OF  PEACE 


*'non;-resistance"  is  misleading,  because  it  is  much 
too  feeble  and  inadequate.  It  suggests  passivity, 
the  goody-goody  attitude  of  ineffectiveness.  The 
words  "overcoming,"  "substituting,"  "re-creat- 
ing," "readjusting  moral  values,"  "forming  new 
centres  of  spiritual  energy"  carry  much  more  of 
the  meaning  implied.  For  it  is  not  merely  the  de- 
sire for  a  conscience  at  rest,  for  a  sense  of  justice 
no  longer  outraged,  that  would  pull  us  into  new 
paths  where  there  would  be  no  more  war  nor  prep- 
arations for  war.  There  are  still  more  stren- 
uous forces  at  work  reaching  down  to  impulses 
and  experiences  as  primitive  and  profound  as  are 
those  of  struggle  itself.  That  "ancient  kindli- 
ness which  sat  beside  the  cradle  of  the  race,"  and 
which  is  ever  ready  to  assert  itself  against  ambi- 
tion and  greed  and  the  desire  for  achievement, 
is  manifesting  itself  now  with  unusual  force,  and 
for  the  first  time  presents  international  aspects. 

Moralists  agree  that  it  is  not  so  much  by  the 
teaching  of  moral  theorems  that  virtue  is  to  be 
promoted  as  by  the  direct  expression  of  social 
sentiments  and  by  the  cultivation  of  practical 
habits;  that  in  the  progress  of  society  sentiments 
and  opinions  have  come  first,  then  habits  of  action 
and  lastly  moral  codes  and  institutions.  Little 
is  gained  by  creating  the  latter  prematurely,  but 
much  may  be  accomplished  to  the  utiUzation  of 

8 


INTRODUCTION 


human  interests  and  affections.  The  Advocates 
of  Peace  would  find  the  appeal  both  to  Pity 
and  Prudence  totally  unnecessary,  could  they 
utilize  the  cosmopolitan  interest  in  human  affairs 
with  the  resultant  social  sympathy  that  at  the 
present  moment  is  developing  among  all  the  na- 
tions of  the  earth. 

By  way  of  illustration,  I  may  be  permitted  to 
cite  the  London  showman  who  used  to  exhibit 
two  skulls  of  Shakespeare — one  when  he  was  a 
youth  and  went  poaching,  another  when  he  was 
a  man  and  wrote  plays.  There  was  such  a  strik- 
ing difference  between  the  roystering  boy  indulg- 
ing in  illicit  sport  and  the  mature  man  who 
peopled  the  London  stage  with  all  the  world,  that 
the  showman  grew  confused  and  considered  two 
separate  acts  of  creation  less  improbable  than  that 
such  an  amazing  change  should  have  taken  place. 
We  can  easily  imagine  the  gifted  youth  in  the 
little  group  of  rustics  at  Stratford-on-Avon  find- 
ing no  adequate  outlet  for  his  powers  save  in  a 
series  of  break-neck  adventures.  His  only  alter- 
native was  to  sit  by  the  fire  with  the  village 
cronies,  drinking  ale  so  long  as  his  shillings  held 
out.  But  if  we  follow  him  up  to  London,  through 
all  the  charm  and  wonder  of  the  stage  which 
represented  his  unfolding  mind,  if  we  can  imagine 
his  delight  as  he  gradually  gained  the  freedom,  not 

9 


NEWER   IDEALS   OF  PEACE 

only  of  that  big  town,  but  of  the  human  city  as 
well,  we  can  easily  see  that  illicit  sport  could  no 
longer  attract  him.  To  have  told  the  great 
dramatist  the  night  Hamlet  first  stepped  upon 
the  boards  that  it  was  a  wicked  thing  to  poach, 
to  have  cautioned  him  that  he  must  consider  the 
cost  of  preserving  the  forest  and  of  raising  the 
deer,  or  to  have  made  an  appeal  to  his  pity  on  be- 
half of  the  wounded  creatures,  would  have  been 
the  height  of  folly,  because  totally  unnecessary. 
All  desire,  almost  all  memory  of  those  days,  had 
dropped  from  him,  through  his  absorption  in  the 
great  and  exciting  drama  of  life.  His  effort  to 
understand  it,  to  portray  it,  had  utilized  and 
drained  his  every  power.  It  is  equally  true  of 
our  contemporaries,  as  it  was  of  the  great  play- 
wright, that  the  attainment  of  this  all-absorbing 
passion  for  multiform  life,  with  the  desire  to 
understand  its  mysteries  and  to  free  its  capacities, 
is  gradually  displacing  the  juvenile  propensities 
to  warfare. 

From  this  standpoint  the  advocates  of  the  new- 
er Ideals  of  Peace  would  have  little  to  do  but  to 
insist  that  the  social  point  of  view  be  kept  para- 
mount, realizing  at  the  same  time  that  the  social 
sentiments  are  as  blind  as  the  egoistic  sentiments 
and  must  be  enlightened,  disciplined  and  directed 
by  the  fullest  knowledge.    The  modern  students 

10 


INTRODUCTION 


of  human  morality  have  told  us  that  primitive 
man,  by  the  very  necessities  of  his  hard  struggle 
for  life,  came  at  last  to  identify  his  own  existence 
with  that  of  his  tribe.  Tribal  life  then  made 
room  within  itself  for  the  development  of  that 
compassion  which  is  the  first  step  towards  sensi- 
bility and  higher  moral  sentiment.  If  we  accept 
this  statement  then  we  must  assume  that  the  new 
social  morality,  which  we  so  sadly  need,  will  of 
necessity  have  its  origin  in  the  social  affections — 
we  must  search  in  the  dim  borderland  between 
compassion  and  morality  for  the  beginnings  of 
that  cosmopolitan  affection,  as  it  is  prematurely 
called. 

The  life  of  the  tribal  man  inevitably  divided 
into  two  sets  of  actions,  which  appeared  under 
two  different  ethical  aspects :  the  relation  within 
the  tribe  and  the  relation  with  outsiders,  the 
double  conception  of  morality  maintaining  itself 
until  now.  But  the  tribal  law  differed  no  more 
widely  from  inter-tribal  law  than  our  common 
law  does  from  our  international  law.  Until 
society  manages  to  combine  the  two  we  shall  make 
no  headway  toward  the  Newer  Ideals  of  Peace. 

If  we  would  institute  an  intelligent  search  for 
the  social  conditions  which  make  possible  this 
combination  we  should  naturally  seek  for  them  in 
the  poorer  quarters  of  a  cosmopolitan  city  where 

II 


NEWER   IDEALS   OF  PEACE 

we  have,  as  nowhere  else,  the  conditions  for  break- 
ing into  this  double  development;  for  making 
a  fresh  start,  as  it  were,  toward  a  synthesis  up- 
on a  higher  moral  line  which  shall  include  both. 
There  is  every  opportunity  and  necessity  for  com- 
*     passion  and  kindliness  such  as  the  tribe  itself 
afforded,  and  there  is  in  addition,  because  of  the 
many  nationalties  which  are  gathered  there  from 
all  parts  of  the  world,  the  opportunity  and  neces- 
sity for  breaking  through  the  tribal  bond.  Early 
associations  and  affections  were  not  based  so  much 
on  ties  of  blood  as  upon  that  necessity  for  defense 
against  the  hostile  world  outside  which  made  the 
life  of  every  man  in  a  tribe  valuable  to  every  other 
man.    The  fact  of  blood  was,  so  to  speak,  an  ac- 
cident.   The  moral  code  grew  out  of  solidarity 
of  emotion  and  action  essential  to  the  life  of  all. 

In  the  midst  of  the  modern  city  which,  at 
moments,  seems  to  stand  only  for  the  triumph 
of  the  strongest,  the  successful  exploitation  of 
the  weak,  the  ruthlessness  and  hidden  crime  which 
follow  in  the  wake  of  the  struggle  for  existence 
on  its  lowest  terms,  there  come  daily — at  least 
to  American  cities — accretions  of  simple  people, 
who  carry  in  their  hearts  a  desire  for  mere  good- 
ness.* They  regularly  deplete  their  scanty  liveli- 
hood in  response  to  a  primitive  pity,  and,  in- 
dependent of  the  religions  they  have  professed, 

12 


4 


INTRODUCTION 


of  the  wrongs  they  have  suffered,  and  of  the  fixed 
morality  they  have  been  taught,  have  an  unquench- 
able desire  that  charity  and  simple  justice  shall 
regulate  men's  relations.  It  seems  sometimes, 
to  one  v^ho  knows  them,  as  if  they  continually 
sought  for  an  outlet  for  more  kindliness,  and  that 
they  are  not  only  willing  and  eager  to  do  a  favor  ^ 
for  a  friend,  but  that  their  kindheartedness  lies 
in  ambush,  as  it  were,  for  a  chance  to  incorporate 
itself  in  our  larger  relations,  that  they  persistent- 
ly expect  that  it  shall  be  given  some  form  of  gov- 
ernmental expression.  This  is  doubtless  due 
partly  to  the  fact  that  emotional  pity  and  kindness 
are  always  found  in  greatest  degree  among  the 
unsuccessful.  We  are  told  that  unsuccessful 
struggle  breeds  emotion,  not  strength;  that  the 
hard-pressed  races  are  the  emotional  races.;  and 
that  wherever  struggle  has  long  prevailed  emo- 
tion becomes  the  dominant  force  in  fixing  social 
relations.  Is  it  surprising,  therefore,  that  among 
this  huge  mass  of  the  unsuccessful,  to  be  found  i|f 
certain  quarters  of  the  modern  city,  we  should 
have  the  ^'medium,''  in  which  the  first  growth  of 
the  new  compassion  is  taking  place? 

In  addition  to  this  compassion  always  found 
among  the  unsuccessful,  emotional  sentiment  runs 
high  among  the  newly  arrived  immigrants  as  a 
result  of  the  emotional  experiences  of  parting 

13 


NEWER  IDEALS   OF  PEACE 

from  home  and  kindred,  to  which  he  has  been  so 
recently  subjected.  An  unusual  mental  alertness 
and  power  of  perception  also  results  from  the  up- 
heaval The  multitudes  of  immigrants  flooding 
the  American  cities  have  many  times  sundered 
social  habits  cherished  through  a  hundred  gen- 
erations, and  have  renounced  customs  that  may 
be  traced  to  the  habits  of  primitive  man.  These 
old  habits  and  customs  have  a  much  more  power- 
ful hold  than  have  mere  racial  or  national  ties. 
In  seeking  companionship  in  the  new  world,  all 
the  immigrants  are  reduced  to  the  fundamental 
equalities  and  universal  necessities  of  human  life 
itself,  and  they  inevitably  develop  the  power  of 
association  which  comes  from  daily  contact  with 
those  who  are  unlike  each  other  in  all  save  the 
universal  characteristics  of  man. 

When  looked  at  too  closely,  this  nascent  mo- 
rality disappears,  and  one  can  count  over  only  a 
thousand  kindly  acts  and  neighborly  offices.  But 
when  meditated  upon  in  the  whole,  there  at  once 
emerge  again  those  vast  and  dominant  sugges- 
tions of  a  new  peace  and  holiness.  It  would 
seem  as  if  our  final  help  and  healing  were  about 
to  issue  forth  from  broken  human  nature  itself, 
out  of  the  pathetic  striving  of  ordinary  men,  who 
make  up  the  common  substance  of  life :  from  those 
who  have  been  driven  by  economic  pressure  or 
14 


INTRODUCTION 


governmental  oppression  out  of  a  score  of  nations, 
These  various  peoples  who  are  gathered  to- 
gether in  the  immigrant  quarters  of  a  cosmopol- 
itan city  worship  goodness  for  its  own  value,  and 
do  not  associate  it  with  success  any  more  than 
they  associate  success  with  themselves ;  they  liter- 
ally "serve  God  for  nought."  If  we  would 
adduce  evidence  that  we  are  emerging  from  a 
period  of  industrialism  into  a  period  of  human- 
itarianism,  it  is  to  such  quarters  that  we  must  be- 
take ourselves.  These  are  the  places  in  which 
it  is  easiest  to  study  the  newer  manifestations  of 
government,  in  which  personal  welfare  is  con- 
sidered a  legitimate  object;  for  a  new  history  of 
government  begins  with  an  attempt  to  make  life 
possible  and  human  in  large  cities,  in  those 
crowded  quarters  which  exhibit  such  an  un- 
doubted tendency  to  barbarism  and  degeneracy 
when  the  better  human  qualities  are  not  nourished. 
Public  baths  and  gymnasiums,  parks  and  libraries, 
are  provided  first  for  those  who  are  without  the 
security  for  bare  subsistence,  and  it  does  not  seem 
strange  to  them  that  it  should  be  so.  Such  a 
community  is  made  up  of  men  who  will  continue 
to  dream  of  Utopian  Governments  until  the  dem- 
ocratic government  about  them  expresses  kindli- 
ness with  protection.  Such  men  will  continue  to 
rely  upon  neighborly  friendliness  until  organized 
15 


NEWER   IDEALS   OF  PEACE 

charity  is  able  to  identify  impulsive  pity  with 
well-considered  relief.    They  will  naively  long 
for  an  education  for  their  children  that  will  fit 
them  to  earn  money  until  public  education  shall 
come  to  consider  industrial  efficiency.    As  their 
hopes  and  dreams  are  a  prophecy  of  the  future  de- 
velopment in  city  government,  in  charity,  in  edu- 
cation, so  their  daily  lives  are  a  forecast  of  com- 
ing international  relations.    Our  attention  has 
lately  been  drawn  to  the  fact  that  it  is  logical 
that  the  most  vigorous  ef¥orts  in  governmental 
reform,  as  well  as  the  most  generous  experiments 
in  ministering  to  social  needs,  have  come  from 
the  larger  cities  and  that  it  is  inevitable  that  they 
should  be  to-day  ''the  centers  of  radicalism,''  as 
they  have  been  traditionally  the  "cradles  of 
liberty."' 

If  we  once  admit  the  human  dynamic  charac- 
ter of  progress,  then  it  is  easy  to  understand  why 
the  crowded  city  quarters  become  focal  points  of 
that  progress. 

A  deeper  and  more  thorough-going  unity  is 
required  in  a  community  made  up  of  highly  dif- 
ferentiated peoples  than  in  a  more  settled  and  strat- 
ified one,  and  it  may  be  logical  that  we  should 
find  in  this  commingling  of  many  peoples  a  cer- 

'  The  Growth  of  Cities  in  the  Nineteenth  Century.  A.  T. 
Weber,  page  432. 

16 


INTRODUCTION 


tain  balance  and  concord  of  opposing  and  con- 
tending forces;  a  gravitation  toward  the  universal. 
Because  of  their  difference  in  all  external  matters, 
in  all  of  the  non-essentials  of  life,  the  people  in  a 
cosmopolitan  city  are  forced  to  found  their  com- 
munity of  interests  upon  the  basic  and  essential 
likenesses  of  their  common  human  nature;  for, 
after  all,  the  things  that  make  men  alike  are 
stronger  and  more  primitive  than  the  things  that 
separate  them.    It  is  natural  that  this  synthesis 
of  the  varying  nations  should  be  made  first  at  the 
points  of  the  greatest  congestion,  quite  as  we 
find  that  selfishness  is  first  curbed  and  social  feel- 
ing created  at  the  points  where  the  conflict  of 
individual  interests  is  sharpest.    One  dares  not 
grow  too  certain  as  to  the  wells  of  moral  healing 
which  lie  under  the  surface  of  the  sullen  work- 
driven  life  which  the  industrial  quarters  of  the 
modern  city  present.     They  fascinate  us  by 
their  mere  size  and  diversity,  as  does  the  city 
itself;  but  certain  it  is,  that  these  quarters  con- 
tinually confound  us  by  their  manifestations  of 
altruism.    It  may  be  that  we  are  surprised  simply 
because  we  fail  to  comprehend  that  the  individual, 
under  such  pressure,  must  shape  his  life  with 
some  reference  to  the  demands  of  social  justice, 
not  only  to  avoid  crushing  the  little  folk  about 
him,  but  in  order  to  save  himself  from  death  by 


NEWER  IDEALS   OF  PEACE 

crushing.  It  is  an  instance  of  the  irresistible 
coalescing  of  the  altruistic  and  egoistic  impulse 
which  is  the  strength  of  social  morality.  We  are 
often  told  that  men  under  this  pressure  of  life  be- 
come calloused  and  cynical,  whereas  anyone  who 
lives  with  them  knows  that  they  are  sentimental 
and  compassionate. 

It  is  possible  that  we  shall  be  saved  from  war- 
fare by  the  "fighting  rabble"   itself,  by  the 
"quarrelsome  mob"  turned  into  kindly  citizens  of 
the  world  through  the  pressure  of  a  cosmopolitan 
neighborhood.    It  is  not  that  they  are  shouting 
for  peace— on  the  contrary,  if  they  shout  at  all, 
they  will  continue  to  shout  for  war— but  that  they 
are  really  attaining  cosmopolitan  relations  through 
daily  experience.    They  will  probably  believe  fdr 
a  long  time  that  war  is  noble  and  necessary  both 
to  engender  and  cherish  patriotism;  and  yet  all  of 
the  time,  below  their  shouting,  they  are  living  in 
the  kingdom  of  human  kindness.    They  are  lay- 
ing the  simple  and  inevitable  foundations  for  an 
international  order  as  the  foundations  of  tribal  and 
national  morality  have  already  been  laid.  They 
are  developing  the  only  sort  of  patriotism  con- 
sistent with  the  intermingling  of  the  nations;  for 
the  citizens  of  a  cosmopolitan  quarter  find  an  in- 
superable difficulty  when  they  attempt  to  hem  in 
their  conception  of  patriotism  either  to  the  "old 
i8 


INTRODUCTION 


country"  or  to  their  adopted  one.  There  arises 
the  hope  that  when  this  newer  patriotism  be- 
comes large  enough,  it  will  overcome  arbitrary 
boundaries  and  soak  up  the  notion  of  nationalism. 
We  may  then  give  up  war,  because  we  shall  find 
it  as  difficult  to  make  war  upon  a  nation  at  the 
other  side  of  the  globe  as  upon  our  next-door 
neighbor. 

These  humble  harbingers  of  the  Newer  Ideals 
of  Peace,  venturing  themselves  upon  a  larger  re- 
lationship, are  most  touching;  and  while  the  suc- 
cess of  their  efforts  can  never  be  guaranteed  or 
spoken  of  too  confidently,  they  stir  us  with  a 
strange  hope,  as  if  new  vistas  of  life  were  open- 
ing before  us— vistas  not  illuminated  with  the 
glare  of  war,  but  with  a  mellowed  glow  of  their 
own.    These  paths  are  seen  distinctly  only  as  we 
ascend  to  a  more  enveloping  point  of  view  and 
obtain  a  larger  and  bulkier  sense  of  the  growing 
sentiment  which  rejects  the  old  and  negative 
bonds  of  discipline  and  coercion  and  insists  upon 
vital  and  fraternal  relationship,  subordinating 
the  lower  to  the  higher.    To  make  this  hope  valid 
and  intelligible,  is  indeed  the  task  before  these 
humble  brethren  of  ours  and  of  those  who  would 
help  them.    They  encourage  us  to  hope  for  the 
discovery  of  a  new  vital  relation— that  of  the  in- 
dividual to  the  race— which  may  lay  the  founda- 
19 


NEWER   IDEALS   OF  PEACE 

tion  for  a  new  religious  bond  adequate  to  the 
modern  situation;  and  we  almost  come  to  believe 
that  such  a  foundation  is,  in  fact,  being  laid  now— 
not  in  speculation,  but  in  action. 

That  which  secured  for  the  early  Hebrew 
shepherd  his  health,  his  peace  of  mind,  and  his 
sense  of  connection  with  the  Unseen,  became  the 
basis  for  the  most  wonderful  and  widespread  re- 
ligion the  world  has  ever  known.  Perhaps,  at 
this  moment,  we  need  to  find  that  which  will  se- 
cure the  health,  the  peace  of  mind,  and  the  oppor- 
tunity for  normal  occupation  and  spiritual  growth 
to  the  humblest  industrial  worker,  as  the  founda- 
tion for  a  rational  conduct  of  life  adapted  to  an 
industrial  and  cosmopolitan  era. 

Even  now  we  only  dimly  comprehend  the 
strength  and  irresistible  power  of  those  "uni^ 
versal  and  imperious  ideals  which  are  formed  in 
the  depths  of  anonymous  life,"  and  which  the 
people  insist  shall  come  to  realization,  not  because 
they  have  been  tested  by  logic  or  history,  but  be- 
cause the  mass  of  men  are  eager  that  they  should 
be  tried  as  a  living  experience.  According  to 
our  different  methods  of  viewing  society,  we  ex- 
press this  newer  ideal  which  is  after  all  so  old  as  to 
have  been  engendered  in  the  tribe  itself.  He 
who  makes  the  study  of  society  a  mere  corollary 
of  biology,  speaks  of  the  ^'theory  of  the  unspe- 

20 


INTRODUCTION 


cialized/'  that  the  simple  cell  develops  much  more 
rapidly  when  new  tissue  is  needed  than  the  more 
highly  developed  one ;  he  who  views  society  from 
the  economic  standpoint  and  finds  hope  only  in  a 
changed  industrial  order,  talks  of  the  ''man  at  the 
bottom  of  society/'  of  the  proletarian  who  shall 
eventually  come  into  his  own;  he  who  believes 
that  a  wiser  and  a  saner  education  will  cure  our 
social  ill,  speaks  ever  and  again  of  ''the  wisdom 
of  the  little  child"  and  of  the  necessity  to  reveal 
and  explore  his  capacity;  while  he  who  keeps 
close  to  the  historic  deductions  upon  which  the 
study  of  society  is  chiefly  founded,  uses  the  old 
religious  phrase,  "the  counsel  of  imperfection," 
and  bids  us  concern  ourselves  with  "the  least  of 
these." 

The  French  have  a  phrase  imperieuse  bonte 
by  which  they  designate  those  impulses  towards 
compassionate  conduct  which  will  not  be  denied, 
because  they  are  as  imperative  in  their  demand 
for  expression  as  is  the  impulse  to  make  music  or 
to  soften  life  by  poesy  and  decoration.  Accord- 
ing to  this  definition,  St.  Francis  was  a  genius 
in  exactly  the  same  sense  as  was  Dante  or 
Raphael,  and  he  revealed  quite  as  they  did,  pos- 
sibilities and  reaches  of  the  human  soul  hitherto 
unsuspected.  This  genius  for  goodness  has  in 
the  past  largely  expressed  itself  through  indi- 

21 


NEWER  IDEALS  OF  PEACE 

viduals  and  groups,  but  it  may  be  that  we  are 
approaching  a  period  which  shall  give  it  collec- 
tive expression,  and  shall  unite  into  one  all  those 
private  and  parochial  efforts.  It  would  be  no  more 
strange  than  was  that  marvelous  coming  together 
of  the  artists  and  the  people  in  the  thirteenth 
century  which  resulted  in  the  building  of  the 
Gothic  cathedrals.    We  may  be  waiting  for  a 
religious  enthusiasm,  for  a  divine  fire  to  fuse  to- 
gether the  partial  and  feeble  efforts  at  "doing 
good"  into  a  transfigured  whole  which  shall  take 
on  international  proportions  as  naturally  as  the 
cathedrals    towered    into   unheard-of  heights. 
The  Gothic  cathedrals  were  glorious  beyond  the 
dreams  of  artists,  notwithstanding  that  they 
were  built  by  unknown  men,  or  rather  by  so 
many  men  that  it  was  a  matter  of  indifference  to 
record  their  names.     Could  we  compare  the 
present  humanitarian  efforts  to  the  building  of  a 
spiritual  cathedral,  it  would  seem  that  the  gar- 
goyles had  been  made  first,  that  the  ground  is 
now  strewn  with  efforts  to  "do  good"  which 
have  developed  a  diabolical  capacity  for  doing 
harm.    But  even  these  may  fall  into  place.  The 
old  cathedral-builders  fearlessly  portrayed  all  of 
life,  its  inveterate  tendency  to  deride  as  well  as 
to  bless;  its  trickery  as  well  as  its  beauty.  Their 
art  was  catholic  enough  to  portray  all,  and  the 


INTRODUCTION 


cathedral  was  huge  enough  to  mellow  all  they 
portrayed  into  a  flowing  and  inspired  whole. 

At  the  present  moment  it  requires  the  phi- 
losopher to  unify  these  spiritual  efforts  of  the 
common  man  into  the  internationalism  of  good 
will,  as  in  the  past  it  was  natural  that  the  phi- 
losophers, the  men  who  looked  at  life  as  a  whole, 
should  have  been  the  first  to  sigh  for  negative 
peace  which  they  declared  would  be  "eternal." 

Speculative  writers,  such  as  Kant,  Bentham, 
and  Buckle,  long  ago  pointed  out  that  the  subsi- 
dence of  war  was  inevitable  as  society  progressed. 
They  contended  that  every  stage  of  human 
progress  is  marked  by  a  further  curtailment  of 
brute  force,  a  limitation  of  the  area  in  which  it  is 
permitted.  At  the  bottom  is  the  small  savage 
community  in  a  perpetual  state  of  warfare;  at  the 
top  an  orderly  society  stimulated  and  controlled 
by  recognized  ideals  of  social  justice.  In  pro- 
portion as  the  savage  society  comes  under  the 
dominion  of  a  common  moral  consciousness,  it 
moves  up,  and  in  proportion  as  the  civilized 
society  reverts  to  the  use  of  brute  force,  it  goes 
down.  Reversion  to  that  brute  struggle  may 
at  any  moment  cost  the  destruction  of  the 
painfully  acquired  bonds  of  equity,  the  ties  of 
mutual  principle,  which  are  wrought  with  such 
effort  and  loosed  with  such  ease.  But  these  earlier 
23 


NEWER  IDEALS   OF  PEACE 


philosophers  could  not  possibly  have  foreseen  the 
tremendous  growth  of  industry  and  commerce 
with  their  inevitable  cosmopolitanism  which  has 
so  recently  taken  place,  nor  without  knowledge  of 
this  could  they  possibly  have  prognosticated  the 
leap  forward  and  the  aggressive  character  which 
the  concern  for  human  welfare  has  latterly  evinced. 
The  speculative  writers  among  our  contempo- 
raries are  naturally  the  only  ones  who  formulate 
this  new  development,  or  rather  bid  us  heed  its 
presence  among  us.    An  American  philosopher^ 
has  lately  reminded  us  of  the  need  to  ^'discover  in 
the  social  realm  the  moral  equivalent  for  war- 
something  heroic  that  will  speak  to  men  as  uni- 
versally as  war  has  done,  and  yet  will  be  as  com- 
patible with  their  spiritual  natures  as  war  has 
proved  itself  to  be  incompatible.''    It  may  be  true 
that  we  are  even  now  discovering  these  moral  sub- 
stitutes, although  we  find  it  so  difficult  to  formu- 
late them.    Perhaps  our  very  hope  that  these  sub- 
stitutes may  be  discovered  has  become  the  cus- 
todian of  a  secret  change  that  is  going  on  all  about 
us.    We  care  less  each  day  for  the  heroism  con- 
nected with  warfare  and  destruction,  and  con- 
stantly admire  more  that  which  pertains  to  labor 
and  the  nourishing  of  human  life.    The  new 

*  William  James,  Professor  of  Philosophy  at  Harvard  Uni- 
versity. 

24 


INTRODUCTION 


heroism  manifests  itself  at  the  present  moment  in 
a  universal  determination  to  abolish  poverty  and 
disease,  a  manifestation  so  widespread  thit  it  may 
justly  be  called  international. 

In  illustration  of  this  new  determination  one 
immediately  thinks  of  the  international  effort  to 
rid  the  face  of  the  earth  of  tuberculosis,  in  which 
Germany,  Italy,  France,  England  and  America 
are  engaged  with  such  enthusiasm.  This  move- 
ment has  its  international  congresses,  its  discov- 
erers and  veterans,  also  its  decorations  and  re- 
wards for  bravery.  Its  discipline  is  severe;  it 
requires  self-control,  endurance,  self-sacrifice  and 
constant  watchfulness.  Its  leaders  devote  hours 
to  careful  teaching  and  demonstration,  they  re- 
claim acres  of  bad  houses,  and  make  over  the  food 
supply  of  huge  cities.  One  could  instance  the 
determination  to  do  away  with  neglected  old  age, 
which  finds  expression  in  the  Old  Age  Pension 
Acts  of  Germany  and  Australia,  in  the  State  Sav- 
ings Banks  of  Belgium  and  France,  in  the  enor- 
mous number  of  Mutual  Benefit  Societies  in  Eng- 
land and  America.  In  such  undertakings  as 
these,  with  their  spontaneous  and  universal  mani- 
festations, are  we  beginning  to  see  the  first  timid 
lorward  reach  of  one  of  those  instinctive  move- 
ments which  carry  onward  the  progressive  good- 
ness of  the  race. 

25 


NEWER   IDEALS   OF  PEACE 

It  is  possible  that  this  substitution  of  nurture 
for  warfare  is  analogous  to  that  world-wide 
effort  to  put  a  limit  to  revenge  which  one  nation 
after  another  essayed  as  each  reached  a,  certain 
stage  of  development.    To  compel  the  avenger  to 
accept  blood-money  in  lieu  of  the  blood  of  his 
enemy  may  have  been  but  a  short  step  in  morals, 
but  at  least  it  destroyed  the  stimulus  to  further 
shedding  of  blood  which  each  avenged  death  had 
afforded,  and  it  laid  the  foundations  for  court 
adjudications.     The  newer  humanitarianism  is 
more  aggressive  and  substitutes  emotional  stimuli 
as  well  as  codes  of  conduct.    We  may  predict 
that  each  nation  quite  as  a  natural  process  will 
reach  the  moment  when  virile  good-will  will  be 
substituted  for  the  spirit  of  warfare.    The  pro- 
cess of  extinguishing  war,  however,  compared  to 
the  limiting  of  revenge,  will  be  amazingly  accel- 
erated.   Owing  to  the  modern  conditions  of  in- 
tercourse, each  nation  will  respond,  not  to  an  iso- 
lated impulse,  but  will  be  caught  in  the  current  of 
a  world-wide  process. 

We  are  much  too  timid  and  apologetic  in  re- 
gard to  this  newer  humanitarianism,  and  do  not 
yet  realize  what  it  may  do  for  us  in  the  way  of 
courage  and  endurance.  We  continue  to  defend 
war  on  the  ground  that  it  stirs  the  nobler  blood 
and  the  higher  imagination  of  the  nation,  and 
26 


INTRODUCTION 


thus  frees  it  from  moral  stagnation  and  the 
bonds  of  commercialism.  We  do  not  see  that  this 
is  to  borrow  our  virtues  from  a  former  age  and 
to  fail  to  utilize  our  own.  We  find  ourselves  in 
this  pliglit  because  our  modern  morality  has 
lacked  fibre,  because  our  humanitarianism  has 
been  much  too  soft  and  literary,  and  has  given  it- 
self over  to  unreal  and  high-sounding  phrases. 
It  appears  that  our  only  hope  for  a  genuine  ad- 
justment of  our  morality  and  courage  to  our 
present  social  and  industrial  developments,  lies  in 
a  patient  effort  to  work  it  out  by  daily  experience. 
We  must  be  willing  to  surrender  ourselves  to  those 
ideals  of  the  humble,  which  all  religious  teachers 
unite  in  declaring  to  be  the  foundations  of  a  sin- 
cere moral  life. 

The  following  pages  attempt  to  uncover  these 
newer  ideals  as  we  may  daily  experience  them  in 
the  modern  city.  It  may  be  found  that  certain 
survivals  of  militarism  in  municipal  government 
are  responsible  for  much  of  the  failure  in  the 
working  of  democratic  institutions.  We  may 
discover  that  the  survivals  of  warfare  in  the  labor 
movement  and  all  the  other  dangers  of  class 
morality  rest  largely  upon  an  appeal  to  loyalties 
which  are  essentially  a  survival  of  the  virtues  of 
a  warlike  period.  The  more  aggressive  aspects 
of  the  newer  humanitarianism  may  be  traced  in 
27 


NEWER  IDEALS   OF  PEACE 

the  movement  for  social  amelioration  and  in  the 
protective  legislation  which  regards  the  weakest 
citizen  as  a  valuable  asset.  The  same  spirit  which 
protests  against  the  social  waste  of  child  labor  al- 
so demands  that  the  traditional  activity  of  woman 
shall  be  utilized  in  civic  life.    When  the  State 
protects  its  civic  resources,  as  it  formerly  de- 
fended its  citizens  in  time  of  war,  industrialism 
versus  militarism  comes  to  be  nurture  versus  con- 
quest.   In  order  to  trace  the  displacement  of  the 
military  ideals  of  patriotism  by  those  of  a  rising 
concern  for  human  welfare,  we  must  take  an  ac- 
counting between  those  forms  of  governmental 
machinery  and  social  organization  which  are  the 
historic  outgrowth  of  conquest  and  repression 
and  the  newer  forms  arising  in  their  midst  which 
embody  the  social  energy  instantly  recognizable 
as  contemporaneous  with  our  sincerest  moral  life. 
To  follow  this  newer  humanitarianism  even 
through  its  obvious  manifestations  requires  at  the 
very  outset  a  definite  abandonment  of  the  eight- 
eenth-century philosophy  upon  which  so  much  of 
our  present  democratic  theory  and  philanthropic 
activity  depends.    It  is  necessary  from  the  very 
beginning  to  substitute  the  scientific  method  of 
research  for  the  a  priori  method  of  the  school  men 
if  we  would  deal  with  real  people  and  obtain  a 
sense  of  participation  with  our  fellows.  The 
28 


INTRODUCTION 

eighteenth-century  humanitarian  hotly  insisted 
upon  "the  rights  of  man/'  but  he  loved  the  peo- 
ple without  really  knowing  them,  which  is  by  no 
means  an  impossible  achievement.    'The  love  of 
those  whom  a  man  does  not  know  is  quite  as  ele- 
mental a  sentiment  as  the  love  of  those  whom  a 
man  does  know/'  but  with  this  difference,  that  he 
shuts  himself  away  from  the  opportunity  of  being 
caught  and  carried  forward  in  the  stream  of  their 
hopes  and  aspirations,  a  bigger  and  warmer  cur- 
rent than  he  dreams  of.    The  eighteenth-century 
humanitarian  substituted  his  enthusiastic  concept 
of  "the  natural  man"  for  the  warmth  which  this 
stream  might  have  given  him,  and  so  long  as  he 
dealt  with  political  concepts  it  answered  his  pur- 
pose.   Mazzini  made  a  most  significant  step  be- 
tween the  eighteenth-century  morality  and  our 
own  by  appealing  beyond  "the  rights  of  man"  to 
the  "duties  to  humanity  /'  but  although  an  impas- 
sioned democrat,  he  was  still  a  moralist  of  the 
earlier  type.    He  realized  with  them  that  the  ap- 
peal to  humanity  would  evoke  a  finer  and  deeper 
response  than  that  to  patriotism  or  to  any  section- 
al morality;  but  he  shared  the  eighteenth-century 
tendency  to  idealization.    It  remained  for  the 
moralist  of  this  generation  to  dissolve  "humanity" 
into  its  component  parts  of  men,  women,  and  chil- 
dren md  to  serve  their  humblest  needs  with  an  en- 
29 


NEWER  IDEALS  OF  PEACE 

thusiasm  which,  so  far  from  being  dependent  up- 
on glamour,  can  be  sustained  only  by  daily  knowl- 
edge and  constant  companionship. 

It  is  no  easy  task  to  detect  and  to  follow  the 
tiny  paths  of  progress  which  the  unencumbered 
proletarian  with  nothing  but  his  life  and  capacity 
for  labor,  is  pointing  out  for  us.  These  paths 
lead  to  a  type  of  government  founded  upon  peace 
and  fellowship  as  contrasted  with  restraint  and 
defence.  They  can  never  be  discovered  with  the 
eyes  of  the  doctrinaire.  From  the  nature  of  the 
case,  he  who  would  walk  these  paths  must  walk 
with  the  poor  and  oppressed,  and  can  only  ap- 
proach them  through  affection  and  understanding. 
The  ideals  of  militarism  would  forever  shut  him 
out  from  this  new  fellowship. 


30 


CHAPTER  II 


SURVIVALS  OF  MILITARISM  IN  CIVIL 
GOVERNMENT 

We  are  accustomed  to  say  that  the  machinery 
of  government  incorporated  in  the  charters  of 
the  early  American  cities,  as  in  the  Federal  and 
State  constitutions,  was  worked  out  by  men  who 
were  strongly  under  the  influence  of  the  historians 
and  doctrinaires  of  the  eighteenth  century.  The 
most  significant  representative  of  these  men  is 
Thomas  Jefferson,  and  their  most  telling  phrase, 
the  familiar  opening  that  "all  men  are  created 
free  and  equal." 

We  are  only  now  beginning  to  suspect  that  the 
present  admitted  failure  in  municipal  administra- 
tion, the  so-called  "shame  of  American  cities," 
may  be  largely  due  to  the  inadequacy  of  those 
eighteenth-century  ideals,  with  the  breakdown  of 
the  machinery  which  they  provided.  We  recog- 
nize the  weakness  inherent  in  the  historic  and  doc- 
trinaire method  when  it  attempts  to  deal  with 
growing  and  human  institutions.  While  these 
men  were  strongly  under  the  influence  of  peace 
31 


NEWER  IDEALS   OF  PEACE 

ideals  which  were  earnestly  advocated,  both  in 
France  and  in  America,  even  in  the  midst  of  their 
revolutionary  periods,  and  while  they  read  the 
burning  poets  and  philosophers  of  their  remark- 
able century,  their  idealism,  after  all,  was  largely 
founded  upon  theories  concerning  "the  natural 
man,"  a  creature  of  their  sympathetic  imagina- 
tions. 

Because  their  idealism  was  of  the  type  that  is 
afraid  of  experience,  these  founders  refused  to 
look  at  the  difficulties  and  blunders  which  a  self- 
governing  people  were  sure  to  encounter,  and  in- 
sisted that,  if  only  the  people  had  freedom, 
they  would  walk  continuously  in  the  paths  of 
justice  and  righteousness.    It  was  inevitable, 
therefore,  that  they  should  have  remained  quite 
untouched  by  that  worldly  wisdom  which  coun- 
sels us  to  know  life  as  it  is,  and  by  that  very 
modern  belief  that  if  the  world  is  ever  to  go  right 
at  all,  it  must  go  right  in  its  own  way. 

A  man  of  this  generation  easily  discerns  the 
crudeness  of  "that  eighteenth-century  conception 
of  essentially  unprogressive  human  nature  in  all 
the  empty  dignity  of  its  'inborn  rights.'  Because 
he  has  grown  familiar  with  a  more  passionate 
human  creed,  with  the  modern  evolutionary  con- 
ception of  the  slowly  advancing  race  whose 

'"The  Spirit  of  Modern  Philosophy,"  Josiah  Royce,  page  275- 
32 


MILITARISM  IN   CITY  GOVERNMENT 


rights  are  not  'Inalienable/'  but  hard-won  in 
the  tragic  processes  of  experience,  he  realizes 
that  these  painfully  acquired  rights  must  be  care- 
fully cherished  or  they  may  at  any  moment  slip 
out  of  our  hands.  We  know  better  in  America 
than  anywhere  else  that  civilization  is  not  a  broad 
road,  with  mile-stones  indicating  how  far  each 
nation  has  proceeded  upon  it,  but  a  complex 
struggle  forward,  each  race  and  nation  contribut- 
ing its  quota;  that  the  variety  and  continuity  of 
this  commingled  life  afford  its  charm  and  value. 
We  would  not,  if  we  could,  conform  them  to  one 
standard.  But  this  modern  attitude,  which  may 
even  now  easily  subside  into  negative  tolerance, 
did  not  exist  among  the  founders  of  the  Republic, 
who,  with  all  their  fine  talk  of  the  "natural  man" 
and  what  he  would  accomplish  when  he  obtained 
freedom  and  equality,  did  not  really  trust  the 
people  after  all. 

They  timidly  took  the  English  law  as  their 
prototype,  *Vhose  very  root  is  in  the  relation  be- 
tween sovereign  and  subject,  between  lawmaker 
and  those  whom  the  law  restrains,"  which  has 
traditionally  concerned  itself  more  with  the 
guarding  of  prerogative  and  with  the  rights  of 
property  than  with  the  spontaneous  life  of  the 
people.  They  serenely  incorporated  laws  and 
survivals  which  registered  the  successful  struggle 
J  33 


NEWER   IDEALS   OF  PEACE 

of  the  barons  against  the  aggressions  of  the 
sovereign,  although  the  new  country  lacked  both 
nobles  and  kings.  Misled  by  the  name  of  govern- 
ment, they  founded  their  new  government  by 
an  involuntary  reference  to  a  lower  social  state 
than  that  which  they  actually  saw  about  them. 
They  depended  upon  penalties,  coercion,  compul- 
sion, remnants  of  military  codes,  to  hold  the  com- 
munity together ;  and  it  may  be  possible  to  trace 
much  of  the  maladministration  of  our  cities  to 
these  survivals,  to  the  fact  that  our  early  democ- 
racy was  a  moral  romanticism,  rather  than  a  well- 
grounded  belief  in  social  capacity  and  in  the  effi- 
ciency of  the  popular  will. 

It  has  further  happened  that  as  the  machinery, 
groaning  under  the  pressure  of  new  social  de- 
mands put  upon  it,  has  broken  down  that  from 
time  to  time,  we  have  mended  it  by  giving  more 
power  to  administrative  officers,  because  we  still 
distrusted  the  will  of  the  people.  We  are  wilHng 
to  cut  off  the  dislocated  part  or  to  tighten  the  gear- 
ing, but  are  afraid  to  substitute  a  machine  of  new- 
er invention  and  greater  capacity.  In  the  hour 
of  danger  we  revert  to  the  military  and  legal  type 
although  they  become  less  and  less  appropriate 
to  city  life  in  proportion  as  the  city  grows  more 
complex,  more  varied  in  resource  and  more  high- 

34 


MILITARISM  IN  CITY  GOVERNMENT 

ly  organized,  and  is,  therefore,  in  greater  need  of 
a  more  diffused  local  autonomy. 

A  little  examination  will  easily  show  that  in 
spite  of  the  fine  phrases  of  the  founders,  the 
Government  became  an  entity  by  itself  away  from 
the  daily  life  of  the  people.  There  was  no  in- 
tention to  ignore  them  nor  to  oppress  them. 
But  simply  because  its  machinery  was  so  largely 
copied  from  the  traditional  European  Govern- 
ments which  did  distrust  the  people,  the  founders 
failed  to  provide  the  vehicle  for  a  vital  and 
genuinely  organized  expression  of  the  popular 
will.  The  founders  carefully  defined  what  was 
germane  to  government  and  what  was  quite  out- 
side its  realm,  whereas  the  very  crux  of  local  self- 
government,  as  has  been  well  said,  is  involved 
in  the  "right  to  locally  determine  the  scope  of  the 
local  government,"  in  response  to  the  needs  as 
they  arise. 

They  were  anxious  to  keep  the  reins  of  govern- 
ment in  the  the  hands  of  the  good  and  professedly 
public-spirited,  because,  having  staked  so  much 
upon  the  people  whom  they  really  knew  so  little, 
they  became  eager  that  they  should  appear  well, 
and  should  not  be  given  enough  power  to  enable 
them  really  to  betray  their  weaknesses.  This 
was  done  in  the  same  spirit  in  which  a  kind  lady 
permits  herself  to  give  a  tramp  five  cents,  believ- 
35 


NEWER   IDEALS   OF  PEACE 

ing  that,  although  he  may  spend  it  for  drink,  he 
'  cannot  get  very  drunk  upon  so  small  a  sum.  In 
spite  of  a  vague  desire  to  trust  the  people,  the 
founders  meant  to  fall  back  in  every  crisis  upon 
the  old  restraints  which  government  has  tradi- 
tionally enlisted  in  its  behalf,  and  were,  perhaps, 
inevitably  influenced  by  the  experiences  of  the 
Revolutionary  War.  Having  looked  to  the 
sword  for  independence  from  oppressive  govern- 
mental control,  they  came  to  regard  the  sword  as 
an  essential  part  of  the  government  they  had  suc- 
ceeded in  establishing. 

Regarded  from  the  traditional  standpoint, 
government  has  always  needed  this  force  of  arms. 
The  king,  attempting  to  control  the  growing 
power  of  the  barons  as  they  wrested  one  privilege 
after  another  from  him,  was  obliged  to  use  it 
constantly;  the  barons  later  successfully  estab- 
lished themselves  in  power  only  to  be  encroached 
upon  by  the  growing  strength  and  capital  of  the 
merchant  class.  These  are  now,  in  turn,  calling 
upon  the  troops  and  militia  for  aid,  as  they  are 
shorn  of  a  pittance  here  and  there  by  the  rising 
power  of  the  proletariat.  The  imperial,  the 
feudal,  the  capitalistic  forms  of  society  each 
created  by  revolt  against  oppression  from  above, 
preserved  their  own  forms  of  government  only 
by  carefully  guarding  their  hardly  won  charters 


MILITARISM  IN   CITY  GOVERNMENT 


and  constitutions.  But  in  the  very  countries 
where  these  successive  social  forms  have  de- 
veloped, full  of  survivals  of  the  past,  some  bene- 
ficent and  some  detrimental,  governments  are  be- 
coming modified  more  rapidly  than  in  this 
democracy  where  we  ostensibly  threw  off  tradi- 
tional governmental  oppression  only  to  encase 
ourselves  in  a  theory  of  virtuous  revolt  against 
oppressive  government,  which  in  many  instances 
has  proved  more  binding  than  the  actual  oppres- 
sion itself. 

Did  the  founders  cling  too  hard  to  that  which 
they  had  won  through  persecution,  hardship,  and 
finally  through  a  war  of  revolution?  Did  these 
doctrines  seem  so  precious  to  them  that  they  were 
determined  to  tie  men  up  to  them  as  long  as  pos- 
sible, and  allow  them  no  chance  to  go  on  to  new 
devices  of  government,  lest  they  slight  these  that 
had  been  so  hardly  won?  Did  they  estimate,  not 
too  highly,  but  by  too  exclusive  a  valuation,  that 
which  they  had  secured  through  the  shedding  of 
blood? 

Man  has  ever  overestimated  the  spoils  of  war, 
and  tended  to  lose  his  sense  of  proportion  in  re- 
gard to  their  value.  He  has  ever  surrounded 
them  with  a  glamour  beyond  their  deserts.  This 
is  quite  harmless  when  the  booty  is  an  enemy's 
sword  hung  over  a  household  fire,  or  a  battered 
37 


NEWER  IDEALS   OF  PEACE 

flag  decorating  a  city  hall,  but  when  the  spoil  of 
war  is  an  idea  which  is  bound  on  the  forehead  of 
the  victor  until  it  cramps  his  growth,  a  theory 
which  he  cherishes  in  his  bosom  until  it  grows  so 
large  and  near  that  it  afflicts  its  possessor  with  a 
sort  of  disease  of  responsibility  for  its  preserva- 
tion, it  may  easily  overshadow  the  very  people 
for  whose  cause  the  warrior  issued  forth. 

Was  this  overestimation  of  the  founders  the 
cause  of  our  subsequent  failures?  or  rather  did 
not  the  fault  lie  with  their  successors,  and  does 
it  not  now  rest  with  us,  that  we  have  wrapped 
our  inheritance  in  a  napkin  and  refused  to  add 
thereto  ?  The  founders  fearlessly  took  the  noblest 
word  of  their  century  and  incorporated  it  into  a 
public  document.    They  ventured  their  fortunes 
and  the  future  of  their  children  upon  its  truth. 
We,  with  the  belief  of  a  progressive,  developing 
human  life,  apparently  accomplish  less  than  they 
with  their  insistence  upon  rights  and  liberties 
which  they  so  vigorously  opposed  to  mediaeval 
restrictions  and  obligations.    We  are  in  that  first 
period  of  conversion  when  we  hold  a  creed  which 
forecasts  newer  and  larger  possibilities  for  gov- 
ernmental  development,  without   in   the  least 
understanding  its  spiritual  implications.  Although 
we  have  scrupulously  extended  the  franchise  to 
the  varied  immigrants  among  us,  we  have  not 
38 


MILITARISM  IN  CITY  GOVERNMENT 

yet  admitted  them  into  real  political  fellowship. 

It  is  easy  to  demonstrate  that  we  consider  our 
social  and  political  problems  almost  wholly  in  the 
light  of  one  wise  group  whom  we  call  native 
Americans,  legislating  for  the  members  of  humbler 
groups  whom  we  call  immigrants.  The  first 
embodies  the  attitude  of  contempt  or,  at  best,  the 
patronage  of  the  successful  towards  those  who 
have  as  yet  failed  to  succeed.  We  may  consider 
the  so-called  immigration  situation  as  an  illustra- 
tion of  our  failure  to  treat  our  growing  Republic 
in  the  spirit  of  a  progressive  and  developing 
democracy. 

The  statement  is  made  many  times  that  we,  as 
a  nation,  are  rapidly  reaching  the  limit  of  our 
powers  of  assimilation,  that  we  receive  further 
masses  of  immigrants  at  the  risk  of  blurring  those 
traits  and  characteristics  which  we  are  pleased  to 
call  American,  with  its  corollary  that  the  national 
standard  of  living  is  in  danger  of  permanent  de- 
basement. Were  we  not  in  the  midst  of  a  cer- 
tain intellectual  dearth  and  apathy,  of  a  skep- 
ticism in  regard  to  the  ideals  of  self-government 
which  have  ceased  to  charm  men,  we  would  see 
that  we  are  testing  our  national  life  by  a  tradition 
too  provincial  and  limited  to  meet  its  present 
motley  and  cosmopolitan  character;  that  we 
lack  mental  energy,  adequate  knowledge,  and 
39 


NEWER   IDEALS   OF  PEACE 


a  sense  of  the  youth  of  the  earth.  The  constant 
cry  that  American  institutions  are  in  danger  be- 
trays a  spiritual  waste,  not  due  to  our  infidelity  to 
national  ideals,  but  arising  from  the  fact  that  we 
fail  to  enlarge  those  ideals  in  accord  with  our 
faithful  experience  of  life.  Our  political  ma- 
chinery devised  for  quite  other  conditions,  has 
not  been  readjusted  and  adapted  to  the  successive 
changes  resulting  from  our  development.  The 
clamor  for  the  town  meeting,  for  the  colonial  and 
early  century  ideals  of  government  is  in  itself 
significant,  for  we  are  apt  to  cling  to  the  past 
through  a  very  paucity  of  ideas. 

In  a  sense  the  enormous  and  unprecedented 
moving  about  over  the  face  of  the  earth  on  the 
part  of  all  nations  is  in  itself  the  result  of  phil- 
osophic dogma  of  the  eighteenth  century — of  the 
creed  of  individual  liberty.  The  modern  system 
of  industry  and  commerce  presupposes  freedom 
of  occupation,  of  travel,  and  residence ;  even  more, 
it  unhappily  rests  in  a  large  measure  upon  the 
assumption  of  a  body  of  the  unemployed  and  the 
unskilled,  ready  to  be  absorbed  or  dropped  ac- 
cording to  the  demands  of  production :  but  back 
of  that,  or  certainly  preceding  its  later  develop- 
ments, lies  "the  natural  rights"  doctrine  of  the 
eighteenth  century.  Even  so  late  as  1892  an 
official  treaty  of  the  United  States  referred  to  the 
40 


MILITARISM  IN   CITY  GOVERNMENT 

''inalienable  rights  of  man  to  change  his  residence 
and  religion."    This  dogma  of  the  schoolmen, 
dramatized  in  France  and  penetrating  under  a 
thousand  forms  into  the  most  backward  European 
States,  is  still  operating  as  an  obscure  force  in 
sending  emigrants  to  America  and  in  our  re- 
ceiving them  here.    But  in  the  second  century  of 
its  existence  it  has  become  too  barren  and  chilly 
to  induce  any  really  zealous  or  beneficent  activity 
on  behalf  of  the  immigrants  after  they  arrive.  On 
the  other  hand  those  things  which  we  do  believe 
— the  convictions  which  might  be  formulated 
to  the  immeasurable  benefit  of  the  immigrants, 
and  to  the  everlasting  good  of  our  national  life, 
have  not  yet  been  satisfactorily  stated,  nor  ap- 
parently apprehended  by  us,  in  relation  to  this 
field.    We  have  no  method  by  which  to  discover 
men,  to  spiritualize,  to  understand,  to  hold  inter- 
course with  aliens  and  to  receive  of  what  they 
bring.    A  century-old  abstraction  breaks  down 
before  this  vigorous  test  of  concrete  cases  and 
their   demand   for   sympathetic  interpretation. 
When  we  are  confronted  by  the  Italian  lazzaroni, 
the  peasants  from  the  Carpathian  foothills,  and 
the  proscribed  traders  from  Galatia,  we  have  no 
national  ideality  founded  upon  realism  and  tested 
by  our  growing  experience  with  which  to  meet 
them,  but  only  the  platitudes  of  our  crudest  youtH. 
41 


NEWER  IDEALS   OF  PEACE 

The  philosophers  and  statesmen  of  the  eighteenth 
century  beUeved  that  the  universal  franchise 
would  cure  all  ills;  that  liberty  and  equahty 
rested  only  upon  constitutional  rights  and  priv- 
ileges; that  to  obtain  these  two  and  to  throw  ofif 
all  governmental  oppression  constituted  the  full 
duty  of  the  progressive  patriot.    We  still  keep  to 
this  formalization  because  the  philosophers  of  this 
generation  give  us  nothing  newer.    We  ignore 
the  fact  that  world-wide  problems  can  no  longer 
be  solved  by  a  political  constitution  assuring  us 
against  opposition,  but  that  we  must  frankly 
face  the  proposition  that  the  whole  situation  is 
more  industrial  than  political.    Did  we  apprehend 
this,  we  might  then  realize  that  the  officers  of  the 
Government  who  are  dealing  with  naturalization 
papers  and  testing  the  knowledge  of  the  immi- 
grants concerning  the  Constitution  of  the  United 
States,  are  only  playing  with  counters  represent- 
ing the  beliefs  of  a  century  ago,  while  the  real 
issues  are  being  settled  by  the  great  industrial  and 
commercial  interests  which  are  at  once  the  products 
and  the  masters  of  our  contemporary  life.  As 
children  who  are  allowed  to  amuse  themselves 
with  poker  chips  pay  no  attention  to  the  real  game 
which  their  elders  play  with  the  genuine  cards  in 
their  hands,  so  we  shut  our  eyes  to  the  exploitation 
and  industrial  debasement  of  the  immigrant,  and 
42 


MILITARISM  IN  CITY  GOVERNMENT 


say,  with  placid  contentment,  that  he  has  been 
given  the  rights  of  an  American  citizen,  and  that, 
therefore,  all  our  obligations  have  been  fulfilled. 
It  is  as  if  we  should  undertake  to  cure  the  con- 
temporary political  corruption  founded  upon  a 
disregard  of  the  Inter-State  Commerce  Acts,  by 
requiring  the  recreant  citizens  to  repeat  the  Con- 
stitution of  the  United  States. 

As  yet  no  vigorous  effort  is  made  to  discover 
how  far  our  present  system  of  naturalization, 
largely  resting  upon  laws  enacted  in  1802,  is  in- 
adequate, although  it  may  have  met  the  require- 
ments of  ''the  fathers/'  These  processes  were 
devised  to  test  new  citizens  who  had  immigrated 
to  the  United  States  from  political  rather  than 
from  economic  pressure,  although  these  two  have 
always  been  in  a  certain  sense  coextensive.  Yet 
the  early  Irish  came  to  America  to  seek  an  oppor- 
tunity for  self-government,  denied  them  at  home ; 
the  Germans  and  Italians  started  to  come  in 
largest  numbers  after  the  absorption  of  their 
smaller  States  into  the  larger  nations;  and  the 
immigrants  from  Russia  are  the  conquered  Poles, 
Lithuanians,  Finns,  and  Jews.  On  some  such 
obscure  notion  the  processes  of  naturalization 
were  worked  out,  and,  with  a  certain  degree  of 
logic,  the  first  immigrants  were  presented  with 
the  Constitution  of  the  United  States  as  a  type 
43 


NEWER  IDEALS   OF  PEACE 

and  epitome  of  that  which  they  had  come  to  seek. 
So  far  as  they  now  come  in  search  of  poHtical 
liberty,  as  many  of  them  do  every  day,  the  test  is 
still  valid,  but,  in  the  meantime,  we  cannot  ignore 
those  significant  figures  which  show  emigration 
to  rise  with  periods  of  depression  in  given  coun- 
tries, and  immigration  to  be  checked  by  periods 
of  depression  in  America,  and  we  refuse  to  see 
how  largely  the  question  has  become  an  economic 
one. 

At  the  present  moment,  as  we  know,  the  actual 
importing  of  immigrants  is  left  largely  to  the 
energy  of  steamship  companies  and  to  those 
agents  for  contract  labor  who  are  keen  enough  to 
avoid  the  restrictive  laws.  The  business  man 
is  here  again  in  the  saddle,  as  he  so  largely  is  in 
American  afifairs.  From  the  time  that  the  im- 
migrants first  make  the  acquaintance  of  the  steam- 
ship agent  in  their  own  villages,  at  least  until  a 
grandchild  is  born  on  the  new  soil,  they  are  sub- 
jected to  various  processes  of  exploitation  from 
purely  commercial  and  self-seeking  interests.  It 
begins  with  the  representatives  of  the  transat- 
lantic lines  and  their  allies,  who  convert  the 
peasant  holdings  into  money,  and  provide  the 
prospective  emigrants  with  needless  supplies,  such 
as  cartridge  belts  and  bowie  knives.  The  brok- 
ers, in  manufactured  passports,  send  their  clients 

44 


MILITARISM  IN  CITY  GOVERNMENT 


by  successive  stages  for  a  thousand  miles  to  a 
port  suiting  their  purposes.   On  the  way  the  emi- 
grants' eyes  are  treated  that  they  may  pass  the 
physical  test ;  they  are  taught  to  read  sufficiently 
well  to  meet  the  literacy  test;  they  are  lent  enough 
money  to  escape  the  pauper  test,  and  by  the  time 
they  have  reached  America,  they  are  so  hopelessly 
in  debt  that  it  requires  months  of  work  to  repay 
all  they  have  received.    During  this  time  they 
are  completely  under  the  control  of  the  last  broker 
in  the  line,  who  has  his  dingy  office  in  an  Amer- 
ican city.    The  exploitation  continues  under  the 
employment  agency  whose  operations  verge  into 
those  of  the  politician,  through  the  naturalization 
henchman,  the  petty  lawyers  who  foment  their 
quarrels  and  grievances  by  the  statement  that  in 
a  free  country  everybody  ''goes  to  law,"  by  the 
liquor  dealers  who  stimulate  a  lively  trade  among 
them,  and,  finally,  by  the  lodging-house  keepers 
and  the  landlords  who  are  not  obliged  to  give 
them  the  housing  which  the  American  tenant  de- 
mands.   It  is  a  long  dreary  road,  and  the  immi- 
grant is  successfully  exploited  at  each  turn.  At 
moments  one  looking  on  is  driven  to  quote  the 
Titanic  plaint  of  Walt  Whitman: 

"As  I  stand  aloof  and  look,  there  is  to  me 
something  profoundly  affecting  in  large  masses 
45 


NEWER  IDEALS   OF  PEACE 

of  men  following  the  lead  of  those  who  do  not 
believe  in  men." 

The  sinister  aspect  of  this  exploitation  lies  in 
the  fact  that  it  is  carried  on  by  agents  whose  stock 
in  trade  are  the  counters  and  terms  of  citizenship. 
It  is  said  that  at  the  present  moment  there  are 
more  of  these  agents  in  Palermo  than  perhaps  in 
any  other  European  port,  and  that  those  politi- 
cians who  have  found  it  impossible  to  stay  even 
in  that  corrupt  city  are  engaged  in  the  brokerage 
of  naturalization  papers  in  the  United  States. 
Certainly  one  effect  of  the  stringent  contract  labor 
laws  has  been  to  make  the  padrones  more  pov/er- 
ful  because  "smuggled  alien  labor"  has  become 
more  valuable  to  American  corporations,  and  also 
to  make  simpler  the  delivery  of  immigrant  votes 
according  to  the  dictates  of  commercial  interests. 
It  becomes  a  veritable  system  of  poisoning  the 
notions  of  decent  government;  but  because  the 
entire  process  is  carried  on  in  political  terms,  be- 
cause the  poker  chips  are  colored  red,  white,  and 
blue,  we  are  childishly  indifferent  to  it.  An 
elaborate  avoidance  of  restrictions  quickly  adapts 
itself  to  changes  either  in  legislation  here  or  at  the 
points  of  departure,  because  none  of  the  legisla- 
tion is  founded  upon  a  real  analysis  of  the  situa- 
tion.   For  instance,  a  new  type  of  broker  in 
Russia  during  the  Russian- Japanese  War  made 
46 


MILITARISM  IN  CITY  GOVERNMENT 


use  of  the  situation  in  the  interests  of  young  Rus- 
sian Jews.  If  one  of  these  men  leaves  the  coun- 
try ordinarily,  his  family  is  obliged  to  pay  three 
hundred  rubles  to  the  Government,  but  if  he  first 
joins  the  army,  his  family  is  free  from  this  obli- 
gation for  he  has  passed  into  the  keeping  of  his 
sergeant.  Out  of  four  hundred  Russian  Jews 
who,  during  three  months,  were  drafted  into  the 
army  at  a  given  recruiting  station,  only  ten  re- 
ported, the  rest  having  escaped  through  immigra- 
tion. Of  course  the  entire  undertaking  is  much 
more  hazardous,  because  the  man  is  a  deserter 
from  the  army  in  addition  to  his  other  disabili- 
ties; but  the  brokers  merely  put  up  the  price  of 
their  services  and  continue  their  undertakings. 

All  these  evasions  of  immigration  laws  and 
regulations  are  simply  possible  because  the  govern- 
mental tests  do  not  belong  to  the  current  situation, 
and  because  our  political  ideas  are  inherited  from 
governmental  conditions  not  our  own.  In  our 
refusal  to  face  the  situation,  we  have  persistently 
ignored  the  political  ideals  of  the  Celtic,  Ger- 
manic, Latin,  and  Slavic  immigrants  who  have 
successively  come  to  us;  and  in  our  overwhelm- 
ing ambition  to  remain  Anglo-Saxon,  we  have 
fallen  into  the  Anglo-Saxon  temptation  of  gov- 
erning all  peoples  by  one  standard.  We  have 
failed  to  work  out  a  democratic  government  which 
47 


NEWER  IDEALS  OF  PEACE 

should  include  the  experiences  and  hopes  of  all 
the  varied  peoples  among  us.    We  justify  the 
situation  by  some  such  process  as  that  employed 
by  each  English  elector  who  casts  a  vote  for 
seventy-five  subjects  besides  himself.    He  indi- 
rectly determines— although  he  may  be  a  narrow- 
minded  tradesman  or  a  country  squire  interested 
only  in  his  hounds  and  horses— the  colonial 
policy,  which  shall  in  turn  control  the  destinies 
of  the  Egyptian  child  toiling  in  the  cotton  factory 
in  Alexandria,  and  of  the  half-starved  Parsee 
working  the  opium  fields  of  North  India.  Yet 
he  cannot,  in  the  nature  of  the  case,  be  informed 
of  the  needs  of  these  far-away  people  and  he 
would  venture  to  attempt  it  only  in  ^regard  to 
people  whom  he  considered  "inferior." 

Pending  a  recent  election,  a  Chicago  reformer 
begged  his  hearers  to  throw  away  all  selfish 
thoughts  of  themselves  when  they  went  to  the 
polls  and  to  vote  in  behalf  of  the  poor  and  igno- 
rant foreigners  of  the  city.  It  would  be  difficult 
to  suggest  anything  which  would  result  in  a  more 
serious  confusion  than  to  have  each  man,  without 
personal  knowledge  and  experiences,  consider  the 
interests  of  the  newly  arrived  immigrant.  The 
voter  would  have  to  give  himself  over  to  a  veritable 
debauch  of  altruism  in  order  to  persuade  himself 
that  his  vote  would  be  of  the  least  value  to  those 


MILITARISM  IN  CITY  GOVERNMENT 


men  of  whom  he  knew  so  little,  and  whom  he 
considered  so  remote  and  alien  to  himself.  In 
truth  the  attitude  of  the  advising  reformer  was 
in  reality  so  contemptuous  that  he  had  never 
considered  the  immigrants  really  partakers  and 
molders  of  the  political  life  of  his  country. 

This  attitude  of  contempt,  of  provincialism, 
this  survival  of  the  spirit  of  the  conqueror  toward 
an  inferior  people,  has  many  manifestations,  but 
none  so  harmful  as  when  it  becomes  absorbed 
and  imitated  and  is  finally  evinced  by  the  children 
of  the  foreigners  toward  their  own  parents. 

We  are  constantly  told  of  the  increase  of 
criminals  in  the  second  generation  of  immigrants, 
and,  day  after  day,  one  sees  lads  of  twelve  and 
fourteen  throwing  off  the  restraint  of  family 
life  and  striking  out  for  themselves.  The  break 
has  come  thus  early,  partly  from  the  forced  de- 
velopment of  the  child  under  city  conditions, 
pa.rtly  because  the  parents  have  had  no  chance  of 
following,  even  remotely,  this  development,  but 
largely  because  the  Americanized  child  has  copied 
the  contemptuous  attitude  towards  the  foreigner 
which  he  sees  all  about  him.  The  revolt  has  in 
it  something  of  the  city  impatience  of  country 
standards,  but  much  more  of  America  against 
Poland  or  Italy.  It  is  all  wretchedly  sordid 
with  bitterness  on  the  part  of  the  parents,  and 
4  49 


NEWER   IDEALS   OF  PEACE 

hardhearted  indifference  and  recklessness  on  the 
part  of  the  boy.    Only  occasionally  can  the  lat- 
ter be  appealed  to  by  filial  affection  after  the  first 
break  has  once  been  thoroughly  made;  and  yet, 
sometimes,  even  these  lads  see  the  pathos  of  the 
situation.    A  probation  officer  from  Hull-House 
one  day  surprised  three  truants  who  were  sitting 
by  a  bonfire  which  they  had  built  near  the  river. 
Sheltered  by  an  empty  freight  car,  the  officer  was 
able  to  listen  to  their  conversation.    The  Pole, 
the  Italian,  and  the  Bohemian  boys  who  had  brok- 
en the  law  by  staying  away  from  school,  by  build- 
ing a  fire  in  dangerous  proximity  to  freight  cars, 
and  by  "swiping"  the  potatoes  which  they  were 
roasting,  seemed  to  have  settled  down  into  an  al- 
most halcyon  moment  of  gentleness  and  remi- 
niscence.   The  Italian  boy  commiserated  his  pa- 
rents because  they  hated  the  cold  and  the  snow 
and  "couldn't  seem  to  get  used  to  it;"  the  Pole 
said  that  his  father  missed  seeing  folks  that  he 
knew  and  was  "sore  on  this  country;"  the  Bo- 
hemian lad  really  grew  quite  tender  about  his 
old  grandmother  and  the  "stacks  of  relations"  who 
came  to  see  her  every  Sunday  in  the  old  country, 
where,  in  contrast  to  her  loneliness  here,  she  evi- 
dently had  been  a  person  of  consequence.  All 
of  them  felt  the  pathos  of  the  situation,  but  the 
predominant  note  was  the  cheap  contempt  of  the 


MILITARISM  IN  CIT y'  GO VERNMENT 


new  American  for  foreigners,  even  though  they 
are  of  his  own  blood.  The  weakening  of  the  tie 
which  connects  one  generation  with  another  may 
be  called  the  domestic  results  of  the  contemptuous 
attitude.  But  the  social  results  of  the  contemp- 
tuous attitude  are  even  more  serious  and  no- 
where so  grave  as  in  the  modern  city. 

Men  are  there  brought  together  by  multitudes 
in  response  to  the  concentration  of  industry  and 
commerce  without  bringing  with  them  the  natu- 
ral social  and  family  ties  or  the  guild  relationships 
which  distinguished  the  mediaeval  cities  and  held 
even  so  late  as  the  eighteenth  century,  when  the 
country  people  came  to  town  in  response  to  the 
normal  and  slowly  formed  ties  of  domestic  service, 
family  affection,  and  apprenticeship.    Men  who 
come  to  a  modern  city  by  immigration  break  all 
these  older  ties  and  the  national  bond  in  addi- 
tion.   There  is  all  the  more  necessity  to  develop 
that  cosmopolitan  bond  which  forms  their  sub- 
stitute.   The  immigrants  will  be  ready  to  adapt 
themselves  to  a  new  and  vigorous  civic  life  found- 
ed upon  the  recognition  of  their  needs  if  the  Gov- 
ernment which  is  at  present  administered  in  our 
cities,will  only  admit  that  these  needs  are  ger- 
mane to  its  functions.    The  framers  of  the  care- 
fully prepared  charters,  upon  which  the  cities  are 
founded,  did  not  foresee  that  after  the  universal 
51 


NEWER  IDEALS   OF  PEACE 

franchise  had  once  been  granted,  social  needs  and 
ideals  were  bound  to  enter  in  as  legitimate  objects 
of  political  action.    Neither  did  these  framers 
realize,  on  the  other  hand,  that  the  only  people  in 
a  democracy  who  can  legitimately  become  the  ob- 
jects of  repressive  government,  are  those  people 
who  are  too  undeveloped  to  use  their  liberty  or 
those  who  have  forfeited  their  right  to  full  citizen- 
ship.   We  have,  therefore,  a  municipal  admin- 
istration in  America  which  concerns  itself  only 
grudgingly  with  the  social  needs  of  the  people, 
and  is  largely  reduced  to  the  administration  of 
restrictive  measures.  The  people  who  come  most 
directly  in  contact  with  the  executive  officials,  who 
are  the  legitimate  objects  of  their  control,  are  the 
vicious,  who  need  to  be  repressed ;  and  the  semi- 
dependent  poor,  who  appeal  to  them  in  their  dire 
need;  or,  for  quite  the  reverse  reason,  those  who 
are  trying  to  avoid  an  undue  taxation,  resenting 
the  fact  that  they  should  be  made  to  support  a 
government  which,  from  the  nature  of  the  case, 
is  too  barren  to  excite  their  real  enthusiasm. 

The  instinctive  protest  against  this  mechan- 
ical method  of  civic  control,  with  the  lack  of 
adjustment  between  the  natural  democratic  im- 
pulse and  the  fixed  external  condition,  inevitably 
produces  the  indifferent  citizen,  and  the  so-called 
"professional   politician."    The  firs^,  because 

52 


MILITARISM  IN   CITY  GOVERNMENT 


he  is  not  vicious,  feels  that  the  real  processes  of 
government  do  not  concern  him  and  wishes  only 
to  be  let  alone.  The  latter  easily  adapts  himself 
to  an  illegal  avoidance  of  the  external  fixed  con- 
ditions by  assuming  that  these  conditions  have 
been  settled  by  doctrinaires  who  did  not  in  the 
least  understand  the  people,  while  he,  the  politi- 
cian, makes  his  appeal  beyond  the  conditions  to 
the  real  desires  of  the  people  themselves.  He  is 
thus  not  only  ''the  people's  friend,''  but  their  in- 
terpreter. It  is  interesting  to  note  how  often 
simple  people  refer  to  ''them,"  meaning  the  good 
and  great  who  govern  but  do  not  understand, 
and  to  "him,"  meaning  the  alderman,  who  repre- 
sents them  in  these  incomprehensible  halls  of 
State,  as  an  ambassador  to  a  foreign  country  to 
whose  borders  they  themselves  could  not  possibly 
penetrate,  and  whose  language  they  do  not  speak. 

In  addition  to  this  difficulty  inherent  in  the 
difference  between  the  traditional  and  actual 
situation,  there  is  another,  which  constantly  arises 
on  the  purely  administrative  side.  The  tradition- 
al governments  which  the  founders  had  copied,  in 
proceeding  by  fixed  standards  to  separate  the 
vicious  from  the  good,  and  then  to  legislate 
against  the  vicious,  had  enforced  these  restrictive 
measures  by  trained  officials,  usually  with  a  mil- 
itary background.  In  a  democracy,  however, 
53 


NEWER   IDEALS   OF  PEACE 


the  officers  entrusted  with  the  enforcement  of  this 
restrictive  legislation,  if  not  actually  elected  by  the 
people  themselves,  are  still  the  appointments  of 
those  thus  elected  and  are,  therefore,  good-natured 
men  who  have  made  friends  by  their  kindness 
and  social  qualities.    This  is  only  decreasingly 
true  even  in  those  cities  where  appointments  are 
made  by  civil  service  examinations.    The  car- 
rying out  of  repressive  legislation,  the  remnant 
of  a  military  state  of  society,  in  a  democracy 
is  at  last  put  into  the  hands  of  men  who  have  at- 
tained office  because  of  political  pull.  The  repress- 
ive measures  must  be  enforced  by  those  sympa- 
thizing with  the  people  and  belonging  to  those 
against    whom    the    measures    operate.  This 
anomalous  situation  produces  almost  inevitably 
one  result:  that  the  police  authorities  themselves 
are  turned  into  allies  of  vice  and  crime.  This 
may  be  illustrated  from  almost  any  of  the  large 
American  cities  in  the  relation  existing  between 
the  police  force  and  the  gambling  and  other  illicit 
life.    The  officers  are  often  flatly  told  that  the 
enforcement  of  an  ordinance  which  the  better  ele- 
ment of  the  city  has  insisted  upon  passing,  is  im- 
possible; that  they  are  expected  to  control  only 
the  robbery  and  crime  that  so  often  associate 
themselves  with  vice.    As  Mr.  Wilcox  ^  has  re- 

^The  American  City,  Dr.  Delos  F.  Wilcox,  page  200. 
54 


MILITARISM  IN   CITY  GOVERNMENT 


cently  pointed  out,  public  sentiment  itself  as- 
sumes a  certain  hypocrisy,  and  in  the  end  we 
have  ''the  abnormal  conditions  which  are  created 
when  vice  is  protected  by  the  authorities,"  and 
in  the  very  worst  cases  there  develops  a  sort  of 
municipal  blackmail  in  which  the  administration 
itself  profits  by  the  violation  of  law.  The  very 
governmental  agencies  which  were  designed  to 
protect  the  citizen  from  vice,  foster  and  protect 
him  in  its  pursuance  because  everybody  involved 
is  thoroughly  confused  by  the  human  element  in 
the  situation.  Further  than  this,  the  officer's 
very  kindness  and  human  understanding  is  that 
which  leads  to  his  downfall,  for  he  is  forced  to 
uphold  the  remnant  of  a  military  discipline  in  a 
self-governing  community.  It  is  not  remark- 
able, perhaps,  that  the  police  department,  the 
most  vigorous  survival  of  militarism  to  be  found 
in  American  cities,  has  always  been  responsible 
for  the  most  exaggerated  types  of  civic  corrup- 
tion. It  is  sad,  however,  that  this  corruption  has 
largely  been  due  to  the  kindliness  of  the  officers 
and  to  their  lack  of  military  training.  There  is 
no  doubt  that  the  reasonableness  of  keeping  the 
saloons  in  lower  New  York  open  on  Sunday  was 
apparent  to  the  policemen  of  the  East  Side  force 
long  before  it  dawned  upon  the  reform  admin- 
istration; and  yet,  that  the  policemen  allowed 
55 


NEWER   IDEALS   OF  PEACE 


themselves  to  connive  at  law-breaking,  was  the 
beginning  of  their  disgraceful  downfall.  Be- 
cause kindness  to  an  enemy  may  mean  death  or  the 
annihilation  of  the  army  which  he  guards,  all 
kindness  is  illicit  on  the  part  of  the  military 
sentinel  on  duty ;  but  to  bring  that  code  over  bod- 
ily into  a  peaceful  social  state  is  to  break  down 
the  morals  of  both  sides,  of  the  enforcer  of  the  ill- 
adapted  law,  as  well  as  of  those  against  whom  it 
is  so  maladroitly  directed. 

In  order  to  meet  this  situation,  there  is  almost 
inevitably  developed  a  politician  of  the  corrupt 
type  so  familiar  in  American  cities,  the  politician 
who  has  become  successful  because  he  has  made 
friends  with  the  vicious.  The  semi-criminal,  who 
are  constantly  brought  in  contact  with  administra- 
tive government  are  naturally  much  interested 
in  its  operations.  Having  much  at  stake,  as  a  mat- 
ter of  course,  they  attend  the  primaries  and  all 
the  other  election  processes  which  so  quickly  tire 
the  good  citizens  whose  interest  in  the  govern- 
ment is  a  self-imposed  duty.  To  illustrate :  it  is  a 
matter  of  much  moment  to  a  gambler  whether 
there  is  to  be  a  ''wide-open  town"  or  not ;  it  means 
the  success  or  failure  of  his  business ;  it  involves, 
not  only  the  pleasure,  but  the  livelihood,  of  all  his 
friends.  He  naturally  attends  to  the  election  of 
the  alderman,  to  the  appointment  and  retention 
56 


MILITARISM  IN   CITY  GOVERNMENT 


of  the  policeman.  He  is  found  at  the  caucus 
"every  time,"  and  would  be  much  amused  if  he 
were  praised  for  the  performance  of  his  civic 
duty ;  but,  because  he  and  the  others  who  are  con- 
cerned in  semi-illicit  business  do  attend  the 
primaries,  the  corrupt  politician  is  nominated 
over  and  over  again. 

As  this  type  of  politician  is  successful  from 
his  alliance  with  crime,  there  also  inevitably 
arises  from  time  to  time  a  so-called  reformer  who 
is  shocked  to  discover  the  state  of  affairs,  the 
easy  partnership  between  vice  and  administrative 
government.  He  dramatically  uncovers  the 
situation  and  arouses  great  indignation  against 
it  on  the  part  of  good  citizens.  If  this  indigna- 
tion is  enough,  he  creates  a  political  fervor  which 
is  translated  into  a  claim  upon  public  gratitude. 
In  portraying  the  evil  he  is  fighting,  he  does  not 
recognize,  or  at  least  does  not  make  clear,  all  the 
human  kindness  upon  which  it  has  grown.  In 
his  speeches  he  inevitably  oififends  a  popular 
audience,  who  know  that  the  evil  of  corruption 
exists  in  all  degrees  and  forms  of  human  weak- 
ness, but  who  also  know  that  these  evils  are  by 
no  means  always  hideous,  and  sometimes  even  are 
lovable.  They  resent  his  over-drawn  pictures  of 
vice  and  of  the  life  of  the  vicious ;  their  sense  of 
57 


NEWER   IDEALS   OF  PEACE 

fair  play,  their  deep-rooted  desire  for  charity  and 
justice,  are  all  outraged. 

To  illustrate  from  a  personal  experience :  Some 
years  ago  a  famous  New  York  reformer  came  to 
Chicago  to  tell  us  of  his  phenomenal  success,  his 
trenchant   methods   of   dealing  with   the  city 
''gambling-hells,"  as  he  chose  to  call  them.  He 
proceeded  to  describe  the  criminals  of  lower  New 
York  in  terms  and  phrases  which  struck  at  least 
one  of  his  auditors  as  sheer  blasphemy  against 
our  common  human  nature.    I  thought  of  the 
criminals  whom  I  knew,  of  the  gambler  for 
whom  each  Saturday  I  regularly  collected  his 
weekly  wage  of  $24.00,  keeping  $18.00  for 
his  wife  and  children  and  giving  him  $6.00  on 
Monday  morning.     His  despairing  statement, 
''the  thing  is  growing  on  me,  and  I  can  never 
give  it  up,"  was  certainly  not  the  cry  of  a  man 
living  in  hell,  but  of  him  who,  through  much 
tribulation  had  at  least  kept  the  loyal  intention. 
I  remembered  the  three  girls  who  had  come  to  me 
with  a  paltry  sum  of  money  collected  from  the 
pawn  and  sale  of  their  tawdry  finery  in  order  that 
one  of  their  number  might  be  spared  a  death  in 
the  almshouse  and  that  she  might  have  the 
wretched  comfort  during  the  closing  weeks  of  her 
life  of  knowing  that,  although  she  was  an  outcast, 
she  was  not  a  pauper.    I  recalled  the  first  mur- 
58 


MILITARISM  IN   CITY  GOVERNMENT 


deter  whom  I  had  ever  known,  a  young  man  who 
was  singing  his  baby  to  sleep  and  stopped  to  lay 
it  in  its  cradle  before  he  rushed  downstairs  into 
his  father's  saloon  to  scatter  the  gang  of  boys 
who  were  teasing  the  old  man  by  giving  him 
English  orders.  The  old  man  could  not  under- 
stand English  and  the  boys  were  refusing  to  pay 
for  the  drinks  they  had  consumed,  but  technically 
had  not  ordered. 

For  one  short  moment  I  saw  the  situation  from 
the  point  of  view  of  humbler  people,  who  sin 
often  through  weakness  and  passion,  but  seldom 
through  hardness  of  heart,  and  I  felt  that  in  a 
democratic  community  such  sweeping  condemna- 
tions and  conclusions  as  the  speaker  was  pouring 
forth  could  never  be  accounted  for  righteousness. 

As  the  policeman  who  makes  terms  with  vice, 
and  almost  inevitably  slides  into  making  gain 
from  vice,  merely  represents  the  type  of  politician 
who  is  living  off  the  weakness  of  his  fellows,  so 
the  over-zealous  reformer  who  exaggerates  vice 
until  the  public  is  scared  and  awestruck,  repre- 
sents the  type  of  politician  who  is  living  off  the 
timidity  of  his  fellov/s.  With  the  lack  of  civic 
machinery  for  simple  democratic  expression,  for 
.a  direct  dealing  with'  human  nature  as  it  is,  we 
seem  doomed  to  one  type  or  the  other — corrup- 
tionists  or  anti-crime  committees. 

59 


NEWER   IDEALS   OF  PEACE 

And  one  sort  or  the  other  we  will  continue  to 
have  so  long  as  we  distrust  the  very  energy  of 
existence,  the  craving  for  enjoyment,  the  push- 
ing of  vital  forces,  the  very  right  of  every  citizen 
to  be  what  he  is  without  pretense  or  assumption 
of  virtue.    Too  often  he  does  not  really  admire 
these  virtues,  but  he  imagines  them  somewhere  as 
a  standard  adopted  by  the  virtuous  whom  he  does 
not  know.    That  old  Frankenstein,  the  ideal  man 
of  the  eighteenth  century,  is  still  haunting  us,  al- 
though he  never  existed  save  in  the  brain  of  the 
doctrinaire. 

This  dramatic  and  feverish  triumph  of  the  self- 
seeker,  see-sawing  with  that  of  the  interested  re- 
former, does  more  than  anything  else,  perhaps, 
to  keep  the  American  citizen  away  from  the 
ideals    of    genuine    evolutionary  democracy. 
Whereas  repressive  government,  from  the  nature 
of  the  case,  has  to  do  with  the  wicked  who  are 
happily  always  in  a  minority  in  the  community,  a 
normal  democratic  government  would  naturally 
have  to  do  with  the  great  majority  of  the  popu- 
lation in  their  normal  relations  to  each  other. 

After  all,  the  so-called  "slum  politician"  ven- 
tures his  success  upon  an  appeal  to  human  senti- 
ment and  generosity.  This  venture  often  results 
in  an  alliance  between  the  popular  politician  and 
the  humblest  citizens,  quite  as  naturally  as  the  re- 

60 


MILITARISM  IN   CITY  GOVERNMENT 

former  who  stands  for  honest  business  adminis- 
tration usually  becomes  allied  with  the  type  of 
business  man  whose  chief  concern  it  is  to  guard 
his  treasure  and  to  prevent  a  rise  in  taxation. 
The  community  is  again  insensibly  divided  into 
two  camps,  the  repressed,  who  is  dimly  conscious 
that  he  has  no  adequate  outlet  for  his  normal 
life  and  the  repressive,  represented  by  the  cau- 
tious, careful  citizen  holding  fast  to  his  own, — 
once  more  the  conqueror  and  his  humble  people. 


6i 


CHAPTER  III 


FAILURE  TO  UTILIZE  IMMIGRANTS  IN  CITY 
GOVERNMENT 

We  do  much  loose  talking  in  regard  to  Amer- 
ican immigration;  we  use  the  phrase,  "the  scum 
of  Europe/'  and  other  unwarranted  words  with- 
out realizing  that  the  unsuccessful  man,  the  un- 
developed peasant,  may  be  much  more  valuable 
to  us  here  than  the  more  highly  developed,  but 
also  more  highly  specialized,  town  dweller,  who 
may  much  less  readily  acquire  the  character- 
istics which  the  new  environment  demands. 

If  successful  struggle  ends  in  the  survival  of 
the  few,  in  blatant  and  tangible  success  for  the 
few  only,  government  will  have  to  reckon  most 
largely  with  the  men  who  have  been  beaten  in 
the  struggle,  with  the  effect  upon  them  of  the 
contest  and  the  defeat;  for,  after  all,  the  unsuc- 
cessful will  always  represent  the  majority  of  the 
citizens,  and  it  is  with  the  large  majority  that  self- 
government  must  eventually  deal  whatever  course 
of  action  other  governments  may  legitimately 
determine  for  themselves. 

62 


IMMIGRANTS  IN  CITY  GOVERNMENT 


To  demand  to  be  protected  from  the  many  un- 
successful among  us,  who  are  supposed  to  issue 
forth  from  the  shallows  of  our  city  life  and  seize 
upon  the  treasure  of  the  citizens  as  the  barba- 
rians of  old  came  from  outside  the  city  walls,  is  of 
course  not  to  have  read  the  first  lesson  of  self- 
government  in  the  light  of  evolutionary  science. 
It  is  to  forget  that  a  revival  in  self-government, 
an  awakening  of  its  original  motive  power  and 
raison  d'etre,  can  come  only  from  a  genuine  desire 
to  increase  its  scope,  and  to  adapt  it  to  new  and 
strenuous  conditions.  In  this  way  science  re- 
vived and  leaped  forward  under  the  pressure  of 
the  enlarged  demand  of  manufacture  and  com- 
merce put  upon  it  during  the  industrial  decades 
just  passed. 

We  would  ask  the  moralists  and  statesmen  of 
this  dawning  century,  equipped  as  they  are,  with 
the  historic  method,  to  save  our  contemporaries 
from  skepticism  in  regard  to  self-government 
by  revealing  to  them  its  adaptability  to  the  needs 
of  the  humblest  man  who  is  so  sorely  pressed  in 
this  industrial  age.  The  statesman  who  would 
fill  his  countrymen  with  enthusiasm  for  demo- 
cratic government  must  not  only  possess  a 
genuine  understanding  of  the  needs  of  the  sim- 
plest citizens,  but  he  must  know  how  to  reveal 
their  capacities  and  powers.  He  must  needs  go 
63 


NEWER  IDEALS   OF  PEACE 

man-hunting  into  those  curious  groups  we  call 
newly  arrived  immigrants,  and  do  for  them  what 
the  scholar  has  done  in  pointing  out  to  us  the 
sweetness  and  charm  which  inhere  in  primitive 
domestic  customs  and  in  showing  us  the  curious 
pivot  these  customs  make  for  religious  and  tribal 
beliefs.    The  scholar  who  has  surrounded  the 
simplest  action  of  women  grinding  millet  or  corn 
with  a  penetrating  reminiscence,  sweeter  than  the 
chant  they  sing,  may  reveal  something  of  the 
same  reminiscence  and  charm  among  many  of  the 
immigrants.    In  the  midst  of  crowded  city  streets 
one  stumbles  upon  an  old  Italian  peasant  with  her 
distaff  against  her  withered  face  and  her  pathetic 
hands  patiently  "holding  the  thread,"  as  has  been 
done  by  myriads  of  women  since  children  needed 
to  be  clad;  or  one  sees  an  old  German  potter, 
misshapen  by  years,  his  sensitive  hands  neverthe- 
less fairly  alive  with  skill  and  delicacy,  and  his 
life  at  least  illumined  with  the  artist's  prerogative 
of  direct  creation.    Could  we  take  these  primitive 
habits  as  they  are  to  be  found  every  day  in  Amer- 
ican cities  and  give  them  their  significance  and 
place,  they  would  be  a  wonderful  factor  for  poetry 
in  cities  frankly  given  over  to  industrialism  and 
absorbed  in  its  activities.    As  a  McAndrews' 
hymn  expresses  the  frantic  rush  of  the  industrial 
river,  so  these  primitive  customs  could  give  us 

64 


IMMIGRANTS  IN  CITY  GOVERNMENT 


something  of  the  mysticism  and  charm  of  the  in- 
dustrial springs,  a  suggestion  of  source,  a  touch 
of  the  refinement  which  adheres  to  simple  things. 
This  study  of  origins,  of  survivals,  of  paths  of 
least  resistance — refining    an    industrial  age 
through  the  people  and  experiences  which  really 
belong  to  it  and  do  not  need  to  be  brought  in 
from  the  outside — would  surely  result  in  a  revived 
enthusiasm  for  human  life  and  its  possibilities 
which  would  in  turn  react  upon  the  ideals  of 
government.    The  present  lack  of  understanding 
of  simple  people  and  the  dearth  of  the  illumination 
which  knowledge  of  them  would  give,  can  be 
traced  not  only  in  the  social  and  political  malad- 
justment of  the  immigrant  in  municipal  centres, 
but  is  felt  in  so-called  ''practical  affairs''  of  nation- 
al magnitude.    Regret  is  many  times  expressed 
that,  notwithstanding  the  fact  that  nine  out  of 
every  ten  immigrants  are  of  rural  birth  and  are 
fitted  to  undertake  that  painstaking  method  of 
cultivating  the  soil  which  American  farmers  de- 
spise, they  nevertheless  all  tend  to  congregate  in 
cities  where  their  inherited  and  elaborate  knowl- 
edge of  agricultural  processes  is  unutilized.  But 
it  is  characteristic  of  American  complacency  when 
any  assisted  removal  to  agricultural  regions  is 
contemplated,  that  we  utterly  ignore  the  past 
experiences  of  the  immigrant  and  always  assume 
5  65 


NEWER   IDEALS   OF  PEACE 

that  each  family  will  be  content  to  live  in  the 
middle  of  its  own  piece  of  ground,  although  there 
are  few  peoples  on  the  face  of  the  earth  who  have 
ever  tried  isolating  a  family  on  one.  hundred  and 
sixty  acres  or  on  eighty,  or  even  on  forty.  But 
this  is  the  American  way— a  survival  of  our  pio- 
neer days — and  we  refuse  to  modify  it,  even  in  re- 
gard to  South  Italians,  although  from  the  day  of 
mediaeval  incursions  they  have  lived  in  com- 
pact villages  with  an  intense  and  elaborated  social 
life,  so  much  of  it  out  of  doors  and  interdependent 
that  it  has  affected  almost  every  domestic  habit. 
Italian  women  knead  their  own  bread,  but  depend 
on  the  village  oven  for  its  baking,  and  the  men 
would  rather  walk  for  miles  to  their  fields  each 
day  than  to  face  an  evening  of  companionship 
limited  to  the  family.    Nothing  could  afiford  a 
better  check  to  the  constant  removal  to  the  cities 
of  the  farming  population  all  over  the  United 
States  than  the  possibility  of  combining  commu- 
nity life  with  agricultural  occupation.    This  com- 
bination would  aflford  that  development  of  civil- 
ization which,  curiously  enough,  density  alone 
brings  and  for  which  even  a  free  system  of  rural 
delivery  is  not  an  adequate  substitute.    Much  of 
the  significance  and  charm  of  rural  life  in  South 
Italy  lies  in  its  village  companionship,  quite  as  the 
dreariness  of  the  American  farm  life  inheres  in 
66 


IMMIGRANTS  IN  CITY  GOVERNMENT 

its  unnecessary  solitude.  But  we  totally  disre- 
gard the  solution  which  the  old  agricultural  com- 
munity offers,  and  our  utter  lack  of  adaptability 
has  something  to  do  with  the  fact  that  the  South 
Italian  remains  in  the  city  where  he  soon  forgets 
his  cunning  in  regard  to  silk  worms  and  olive 
trees,  but  continues  his  old  social  habits  to  the  ex- 
tent of  filling  an  entire  tenement  house  with  the 
people  from  one  village. 

We  also  exhibit  all  the  Anglo-Saxon  distrust 
of  any  experiment  with  land  tenure  or  method 
of  taxation,  although  our  single-tax  advocates  do 
not  fail  to  tell  us  daily  of  the  stupidity  of  the 
present  arrangement.    It  might,  indeed,  be  well  to 
make  a  few  experiments  upon  an  historic  basis 
before  their  enthusiasm  converts  us  all.  For 
centuries  in  Russia  the  Slavic  village,  the  mir 
system  of  land  occupation,  has  been  in  successful 
operation,  training  men  within  its  narrow  limits 
to  community  administration.    Yet  when  a  per- 
secuted sect  from  Russia  wishes  to  find  refuge  in 
America,  we  insist  that  seven  thousand  people 
shall  give  up  all  at  once  a  system  of  land  owner- 
ship in  which  they  are  experts.    Americans  de- 
clare the  system  to  be  impracticable,  although  it 
is  singularly  like  that  in  vogue  in  Palestine  dur- 
ing the  period  of  its  highest  prosperity.  We 
cannot  receive  them  in  the  United  States,  because 

67 


NEWER  IDEALS   OF  PEACE 

our  laws  have  no  way  of  dealing  with  such  cases. 
And  in  Canada,  where  they  are  finally  settled,  the 
unimaginative  Dominion  officials  are  driven  to 
the  verge  of  distraction  concerning  registration 
of  deeds  and  the  collection  of  taxes  from  men 
who  do  not  claim  acres  in  their  own  names,  but 
in  the  name  of  the  village.    The  official  distrac- 
tion is  reflected  and  intensified  among  the  people 
themselves,  to  the  point  of  driving  them  into  the 
mediaeval  "marching  mania,"  in  the  hope  of  find- 
ing a  land  in  the  south  where  they  may  carry  out 
their  inoffensive  "mir"  system.    The  entire  situa- 
tion might  prove  that  an  unbending  theory  of  in- 
dividualism may  become  as  fixed  as  status  itself, 
although  there  are  certainly  other  factors  m  the 
Doukhobor  situation— religious  bigotry,  and  the 
self-seeking  of  leadership.    In  spite  of  the  fact 
that  the  Canadian  officials  have  in  other  matters 
exhibited  much  of  the  adaptability  which  distin- 
guishes the  British  colonial  policy,  they  are  com- 
pletely stranded  on  the  rock  of  Anglo-Saxon  m- 
dividualistic  ownership,  and  assume  that  any  oth- 
er system  of  land  tenure  is  subversive  of  govern- 
ment, forgetting  that  Russia  manages  to  exert  a 
fair  amount  of  governmental  control  over  thou- 
sands of  acres  held  under  the  system  which  they 
so  detest. 

In  our  eagerness  to  reproach  the  immigrants  for 
68 


IMMIGRANTS  IN  CITY  GOVERNMENT 


not  going  upon  the  land  we  almost  overlook  the 
contributions  to  city  life  which  those  of  them, 
who  were  adapted  to  it  in  Europe,  are  making  to 
our  cities  here.  From  dingy  little  eating-houses 
in  lower  New  York,  performing  a  function  some- 
what between  the  eighteenth-century  coffee-house 
and  the  Parisian  cafe,  is  issuing  at  the  present 
moment  perhaps  the  sturdiest  realistic  drama  that 
is  being  produced  on  American  soil.  Late  into 
the  night  speculation  is  carried  forward — not  on 
the  nice  questions  of  the  Talmud  and  on  quibbles 
of  logic ;  but  minds  long  trained  on  these  serious- 
ly discuss  the  need  of  a  readjustment  of  the  indus- 
trial machine  in  order  that  the  primitive  sense  of 
justice  and  righteousness  may  secure  larger  play 
in  our  social  organization.  And  yet  a  Russian  in 
Chicago  who  used  to  believe  that  Americans  cared 
first  and  foremost  for  political  liberty  and  that  they 
would  certainly  admire  those  who  had  suffered  in 
its  cause,  finds  no  one  interested  in  his  story  of  six 
years'  banishment  beyond  the  Antarctic  circle.  He 
is  really  listened  to  only  when  he  tells  the  tale  to 
a  sportsman  of  the  fish  he  had  caught  during  the 
six  weeks  of  summer  when  the  rivers  were  open. 
"Lively  work  then,  but  plenty  of  time  to  eat  them 
dried  or  frozen  through  the  rest  of  the  year,"  is 
the  most  sympathetic  comment  he  has  yet  re- 
69 


NEWER   IDEALS   OF  PEACE 

ceived  upon  an  experience  which,  at  least  to  him, 
held  the  bittersweet  of  martyrdom. 

Among  the  colonies  of  the  most  recently  im- 
migrated Jews,  who  still  carry  out  their  ortho- 
dox customs  and  a  ritual  preserved  through  cen- 
turies in  the  Ghetto,  one  constantly  feels  during 
a  season  of  religious  observance,  a  refreshing  in- 
sistence upon  the  reality  of  the  inner  life,  and  up- 
on the  dignity  of  its  expression  in  inherited  form. 
Perhaps  the  most  striking  reproach  to  the  mate- 
rialism of  Chicago  is  the  sight  on  a  solemn  Jewish 
holiday  of  a  Chicago  River  bridge  lined  with  men 
and  women  oblivious  of  the  noisy  traffic  and  sor- 
did surroundings,  casting  their  sins  upon  the 
waters  that  they  may  be  carried  far  away.  The 
scene  is  a  clear  statement  that,  after  all,  life 
does  not  consist  in  wealth,  in  learning,  in  enter- 
prise, in  energy,  in  success,  not  even  in  that 
modern  fetich,  culture,  but  in  an  inner  equilib- 
rium, in  "the  agreement  of  soul."  It  is  a  relief 
to  see  even  this  exaggerated  and  grotesque  presen- 
tation of  spiritual  values. 

But  the  statesman  shuts  himself  away  from  the 
possibility  of  using  these  great  reservoirs  of  human 
ability  and  motive  power  because  he  considers  it 
patriotic  to  hold  to  governmental  lines  and  ideals 
laid  down  a  century  and  a  quarter  ago.  Because 
of  a  military  inheritance,  we  as  a  nation  stoutly 

70 


IMMIGRANTS  IN  CITY  GOVERNMENT 


contend  that  all  this  varied  and  suggestive  life 
has  nothing  to  do  with  government  nor  patriot- 
ism, and  that  we  perform  the  full  duty  of  Amer- 
ican citizens  when  the  provisions  of  the  statutes 
on  naturalization  are  carried  out.  In  the  mean- 
time, in  the  interests  of  our  theory  that  commer- 
cial and  governmental  powers  should  have  no 
connection  with  each  other,  we  carefully  ignore 
the  one  million  false  naturalization  papers  in  the 
United  States  issued  and  concealed  by  commer- 
cialized politics.  Although  we  have  an  uneasy 
knowledge  that  these  powers  are  curiously  allied, 
we  profess  that  the  latter  has  no  connection  with 
the  former  and  no  control  over  it.  We  steadily 
refuse  to  recognize  the  fact  that  our  age  is  swayed 
by  industrial  forces. 

Fortunately,  life  is  much  bigger  and  finer  than 
our  theories  about  it,  and,  among  all  the  immi^ 
grants  in  the  great  cities,  there  is  slowly  develop- 
ing the  beginnings  of  self-government  on  the 
line^  of  their  daily  experiences.  The  man  who 
really  knows  immigrants  and  undertakes  to 
naturalize  them,  makes  no  pretense  of  the  lack  of 
connection  between  their  desire  to  earn  their  daily 
bread  and  their  citizenship.  The  petty  and  often 
corrupt  politician  who  is  first  kind  to  immigrants, 
realizes  perfectly  well  that  the  force  pushing  them 
to  this  country  has  been  industrial  need  and  that 
71  . 


NEWER  IDEALS   OF  PEACE 


recognition  of  this  need  is  legitimate.    He  fol- 
lows the  natural  course  of  events  when  he  prom- 
ises to  get  the  immigrant  "a  job,"  for  that  is  un- 
doubtedly what  the  immigrant  most  needs  in  all 
the  world.    If  the  politician  nearest  to  him  were 
really  interested  in  the  immigrant  and  were  to 
work  out  a  scheme  of  naturalization  fitted  to  the 
situation,  the  immigrant  would  proceed  from  the 
street-cleaning  and  sewer-digging  in  which  he 
first  engages,  to  an  understanding  of  the  relation 
of  these   simple   offices   to   city  government. 
Through  them  he  would  understand  the  obliga- 
tion of  his  alderman  to  secure  cleanliness  for  the 
streets  in  which  his  children  play  and  for  the  ten- 
ement in  which  he  lives.  The  notion  of  represen- 
tative government  could  be  made  quite  clear  and 
concrete  to  him.  He  could  demand  his  rights  and 
use  his  vote  in  order  to  secure  them.    His  very 
naive  demands  might  easily  become  a  restraint,  a 
purifying  check  upon  the  alderman,  instead  of  a 
source  of  constant  corruption  and  exploitation. 
But  when  the  politician  attempts  to  naturalize  the 
bewildered  immigrant,  he  must  perforce  accept 
the  doctrinaire  standard  imposed  by  men  who 
held  a  theory  totally  unattached  to  experience, 
and  he  must,  therefore,  begin  with  the  remote 
Constitution  of  the  United  States.    At  the  Cook 
County  Court-House  only  a  short  time  ago  a  can- 
72 


IMMIGRANTS  IN  CITY  GOVERNMENT 


didate  for  naturalization,  who  was  asked  the 
usual  question  as  to  what  the  Constitution  of  the 
United  States  was,  replied:  'The  Illinois  Cen- 
tral.'' His  mind  naturally  turned  to  his  work, 
to  the  one  bit  of  contribution  he  had  genuinely 
made  to  the  new  country,  and  his  reply  might 
well  offer  a  valuable  suggestion  to  the  student  of 
educational  method.  Some  of  our  most  ad- 
vanced schools  are  even  now  making  industrial 
construction  and  evolution  a  natural  basis  for  all 
future  acquisition  of  knowledge,  and  they  claim 
that  anything  less  vital  and  creative  is  inadequate. 

It  is  surprising  how  a  simple  experience,  if  it 
be  but  genuine,  gives  an  opening  into  citizenship 
altogether  lacking  to  the  more  grandiose  at- 
tempts. A  Greek-American,  slaughtering  sheep 
in  a  tenement-house  yard,  reminiscent  of  the 
Homeric  tradition,  can  be  made  to  see  the  effect 
of  the  improvised  shambles  on  his  neighbor's 
health  and  the  right  of  the  city  to  prohibit  the 
slaughtering,  only  as  he  perceives  the  development 
of  city  government  upon  its  most  modern  basis. 

The  enforcement  of  adequate  child  labor  laws 
offers  unending  opportunity  to  better  citizenship 
founded,  not  upon  theory  but  on  action,  as  does 
the  compulsory  education  law,  which  makes  clear 
that  education  is  a  matter  of  vital  importance  to 
the  American  city  and  to  the  State  which  has 
73 


NEWER   IDEALS   OF  PEACE 


enacted  definite,  well-considered  legislation  in  re- 
gard to  it.  Some  of  the  most  enthusiastic  sup- 
porters of  child-labor  legislation  and  of  compul- 
sory education  laws  are  those  parents  who  sacri- 
fice old-world  tradition,  as  well  as  the  much- 
needed  earnings  of  their  young  children,  because 
of  loyalty  to  the  laws  of  their  adopted  country. 
Certainly  genuine  sacrifice  for  the  nation's  law  is 
a  good  foundation  for  patriotism,  and  as  this 
again  is  not  a  doctrinaire  question,  women  are 
not  debarred,  and  mothers  who  wash  and  scrub 
for  the  meagre  support  of  their  children  say, 
sturdily,  sometimes :  'It  will  be  a  year  before  he 
can  go  to  work  without  breaking  the  law,  but  we 
came  to  this  country  to  give  the  young  ones  a 
chance,  and  we  are  not  going  to  begin  by  having 
them  do  what's  not  right." 

Upon  some  such  basis  as  this  the  Hebrew 
Alliance  and  the  Charity  Organization  of  New 
York,  which  are  putting  forth  desperate  energy 
in  the  enormous  task  of  ministering  to  the  suf- 
fering which  immigration  entails,  are  develop- 
ing understanding  and  respect  for  the  alien 
through  their  mutual  efforts  to  secure  more  ade- 
quate tenement-house  regulation  and  to  control 
the  spread  of  tuberculosis;  both  these  under- 
takings being  perfectly  hopeless  without  the  in- 
telligent co-operation  of  the  immigrants  them- 
74 


IMMIGRANTS  IN  CITY  GOVERNMENT 


selves.  Through  such  humble  doors,  perchance, 
the  immigrant  will  at  last  enter  into  his  heritage 
in  a  new  nation.  Democratic  government  has 
ever  been  the  result  of  spiritual  travail  and  moral 
effort.  Apparently,  even  here,  the  immigrant 
must  pay  the  old  cost,  and  he  seems  to  represent 
the  group  and  type  which  is  making  the  most 
genuine  contribution  to  the  present  growth  in 
governmental  functions,  with  its  constant  demand 
for  increasing  adaptations. 

In  the  induction  of  the  adult  immigrant  into 
practical  citizenship,  we  constantly  ignore  his 
daily  experience.  We  also  assume  in  our  formal 
attempts  to  teach  patriotism  to  him  and  to  his 
children,  that  experience  and  traditions  have  no 
value,  and  that  a  new  sentiment  must  be  put  into 
aliens  by  some  external  process.  Some  years 
ago,  a  public-spirited  organization  engaged  a 
number  of  speakers  to  go  to  the  various  city 
schools  in  order  to  instruct  the  children  in  the 
significance  of  Decoration  Day  and  to  foster 
patriotism  among  the  foreign  born,  by  descrip- 
tions of  the  Civil  War.  In  one  of  the  schools, 
filled  with  Italian  children,  an  old  soldier,  a 
veteran  in  years  and  experience,  gave  a  descrip- 
tion of  a  battle  in  Tennessee,  and  of  his  personal 
adventures  in  using  a  pile  of  brush  as  an  ambus- 
cade and  a  fortification.  Coming  from  the 
75 


NEWER   IDEALS   OF  PEACE 

schoolhouse,  an  eager  young  Italian  broke  out, 
with  characteristic  vividness,  into  a  description 
of  his  father's  campaigning  under  the  leadership 
of  Garibaldi,  possibly  from  some  obscure  notion 
that  that,  too,  was  a  civil  war  fought  from  prin- 
ciple, but  more  likely  because  the  description  of 
one  battle  had  roused  in  his  mind  the  memory  of 
another  such  description.    The  lecturer,  whose 
sympathies  happened  to  be  on  the  other  side  of  the 
Garibaldian  conflict,  somewhat  sharply  told  him 
that  he  must  forget  all  that ;  that  he  was  no  longer 
an  Italian,  but  an  American.    The  natural  growth 
of  patriotism  based  upon  respect  for  the  achieve- 
ments of  one's  fathers,  the  bringing  together  of 
the  past  with  the  present,  the  significance  of  the 
almost  world-wide  effort  at  a  higher  standard  of 
political  freedom  which  swept  over  all  Europe  and 
America  between  1848  and  1872  could,  of  course, 
have  no  place  in  the  boy's  mind  because  it  had 
none  in  the  mind  of  the  instructor  whose  patriot- 
ism apparently  tried  to  purify  itself  by  the  Amer- 
ican process  of  elimination. 

How  far  a  certain  cosmopolitan  humanitarian- 
ism  ignoring  national  differences,  is  either  pos- 
sible or  desirable,  it  is  difficult  to  state;  but  cer- 
tain it  is  that  the  old  type  of  patriotism,  founded 
upon  a  common  national  history  and  land  occu- 
pation, becomes  to  many  of  the  immigrants  v,rho 
76 


IMMIGRANTS  IN  CITY  GOVERNMENT 


bring  it  with  them  a  veritable  stumbling-block 
and  impediment.  Many  Greeks  whom  I  know 
are  fairly  besotted  with  a  consciousness  of  their 
national  importance,  and  the  achievements  of 
their  glorious  past.  Among  them  the  usual 
effort  to  found  a  new  patriotism  upon  American 
history  is  often  an  absurd  undertaking;  for  in- 
stance, on  the  night  of  one  Thanksgiving  Day, 
I  spent  some  time  and  zeal  in  a  description  of  the 
Pilgrim  Fathers,  and  the  motives  which  had  driven 
them  across  the  sea,  while  the  experiences  of  the 
Plymouth  colony  were  illustrated  by  stereopticon 
slides  and  little  dramatic  scenes.  The  audience 
of  Greeks  listened  respectfully,  although  I  was 
uneasily  conscious  of  the  somewhat  feeble  at- 
tempt to  boast  of  Anglo-Saxon  achievement  in 
hardihood  and  privation,  to  men  whose  powers 
of  admiration  were  absorbed  in  their  Greek 
background  of  philosophy  and  beauty.  At  any 
rate,  after  the  lecture  was  over,  one  of  the  Greeks 
said  to  me,  quite  simply,  "I  wish  I  could  describe 
my  ancestors  to  you;  they  were  very  different 
from  yours."  His  further  remarks  were  trans- 
lated by  a  little  Irish  boy  of  eleven,  who  speaks 
modern  Greek  with  facility  and  turns  many  an 
honest  penny  by  translating,  into  the  somewhat 
pert  statement:  *'He  says  if  that  is  what  your 
ancestors  are  like,  that  his  could  beat  them  out." 
77 


NEWER   IDEALS   OF  PEACE 

It  is  a  good  illustration  of  our  faculty  for  Ignor- 
ing the  past,  and  of  our  failure  to  understand 
the  immigrant's  estimation  of  ourselves.  This 
lack  of  a  more  cosmopolitan  standard,  of  a  con- 
sciousness of  kind  founded  upon  creative  imag- 
ination and  historic  knowledge  is  apparent  in 
many  directions,  and  cruelly  widens  the  gulf  be- 
tween immigrant  fathers  and  their  children  who 
are  ''Americans  in  process/' 

A  hideous  story  comes  from  New  York  of  a 
young  Russian  Jewess  who  was  employed  as  a 
stenographer  in  a  down-town  office,  where  she 
became  engaged  to  be  married  to  a  young  man  of 
Jewish-American  parentage.  She  felt  keenly 
the  difference  between  him  and  her  newly  immi- 
grated parents,  and  on  the  night  when  he  was  to 
be  presented  to  them  she  went  home  early  to 
make  every  possible  preparation  for  his  coming. 
Her  efforts  to  make  the  menage  presentable  were 
so  discouraging,  the  whole  situation  filled  her 
with  such  chagrin,  that  an  hour  before  his  ex- 
pected arrival,  she  ended  her  life.  Although 
the  father  was  a  Talmud  scholar  of  standing  in 
his  native  Russian  town,  and  the  lover  was  a  clerk 
of  very  superficial  attainments,  she  possessed 
no  standard  by  which  to  judge  the  two  men. 
This  lack  of  standard  must  be  charged  to  the  en- 
tire community;  for  why  should  we  expect  an 
78 


IMMIGRANTS  IN  CITY  GOVERNMENT 

untrained  girl  to  be  able  to  do  for  herself  what 
the  community  so  pitifully  fails  to  accomplish  ? 

All  the  members  of  the  community  are  equally 
stupid  in  throwing  away  the  immigrant  revelation 
of  social  customs  and  inherited  energy.  We 
continually  allow  this  valuable  human  experience 
to  go  to  waste  although  we  have  reached  the  stage 
of  humanitarianism  when  no  infant  may  be 
wantonly  allowed  to  die,  no  man  be  permitted  to 
freeze  or  starve,  if  the  State  can  prevent  it.  We 
may  truthfully  boast  that  the  primitive,  wasteful 
struggle  of  physical  existence  is  practically  over, 
but  no  such  statement  can  be  made  in  regard  to 
spiritual  life.  Students  of  social  conditions 
recognize  the  fact  that  modern  charity  constantly 
grows  more  democratic  and  constructive,  and 
daily  more  concerned  for  preventive  measures, 
but  to  admit  frankly  similar  aims  as  matters  for 
municipal  government  as  yet  seems  impossible. 

In  this  country  it  seems  to  be  only  the  politician 
at  the  bottom,  the  man  nearest  the  people,  who 
understands  that  there  is  a  growing  disinterested- 
ness taking  hold  of  men's  hopes  and  imaginations 
in  every  direction.  He  often  plays  upon  it  and  be- 
trays it;  but  he  at  least  knows  it  is  there. 

The  two  points  at  which  government  is  de- 
veloping most  rapidly  at  the  present  moment  are 
naturally  the  two  where  it  of  necessity  exercises 

79 


NEWER  IDEALS  OF  PEACE 
functions  of  nurture  and  protection :  first,  in  rela- 
tion to  the  young  criminal,  second,  in  relation  to 
the  poor  and  dependent.    One  of  the  latest  de- 
velopments is  the  Juvenile  Courts  which  the  large 
cities  are  inaugurating.    Only  fifteen  years  ago 
when  I  first  went  to  live  in  an  industrial  district 
of  Chicago,  if  a  boy  was  arrested  on  some  trifling 
charge-and  dozens  of  them  were  thus  arrested 
each  month-the  only  possible  way  to  secure  an- 
other chance  for  him  by  restoring  him  to  his 
home  with  an  opportunity  to  become  a  law-abid- 
ing citizen,  was  through  the  alderman  of  the  ward. 
Upon  the  request  of  a  distracted  relative  or  the 
precinct  captain,  the  alderman  would  "speak  to  the 
iudge"  and  secure  the  release  of  the  boy.  The 
kindness  of  the  alderman  was  genuine,  as  was 
the  gratitude  of  all  concerned;  but  the  inevitable 
impression  remained  that  government  was  harsh, 
and  naturally  dealt  out  policemen  and  prisons, 
and  that  the  political  friend  alone  stood  for  kind- 
ness   That  this  kindness  was  in  a  measure  illicit 
and  mysterious  in  its  workings  made  it  all  the 
more  impressive.  . 

But  so  much  advance  has  been  made  in  so 
short  a  time  as  fifteen  years,  toward  incorporatmg 
kindly  concern  for  the  young  and  a  desire  to  keep 
them  in  the  path  of  rectitude  within  the  process 
of  government  itself,  that  in  Chicago  alone 


IMMIGRANTS  IN  CITY  GOVERNMENT 


twenty-four  probation  oflficers,  as  they  are  called, 
are  paid  from  the  public  funds.  The  wayward 
boy  is  committed  to  one  of  these  for  another 
chance  as  a  part  of  the  procedure  of  the  court. 
He  is  not  merely  released  by  an  act  of  clemency 
so  magnificent  and  irrelevant  as  to  dazzle  him 
with  a  sense  of  the  aldermanic  power,  but  he  is 
put  under  the  actual  care  of  a  probation  officer 
that  he  may  do  better.  He  is  assisted  to  keep 
permanently  away  from  the  police  courts  and 
their  allied  penal  institutions. 

In  one  of  the  most  successful  of  these  courts, 
that  of  Denver,  the  Judge  who  can  point  to  a  re- 
markable record  with  the  bad  boys  of  the  city, 
plays  a  veritable  game  with  them  against  the 
police  force,  he  and  the  boys  undertaking  to  be 
good  without  the  help  of  repression,  and  in  spite 
of  the  machinations  of  the  police.  For  instance, 
if  the  boys  who  have  been  sentenced  to  the 
State  Reform  School  at  Golden,  deliver  them- 
selves without  the  aid  of  the  Sheriff  whose  duty 
it  is  to  take  them  there,  they  not  only  vindicate 
their  manliness  and  readiness  *'to  take  their 
medicine,"  but  they  beat  the  sheriff  who  belongs 
to  the  penal  machinery  out  of  his  five-dollar  fee. 
Over  this  fact  they  openly  triumph — a  simple 
example,  perhaps,  but  significant  of  the  attitude 
6  8i 


NEWER   IDEALS   OF  PEACE 

of  the  well-intentioned  toward  repressive  gov- 
ernment. 

The  Juvenile  Courts  are  beginning  to  take  a 
really  parental  attitude  towards  all  dependent 
children,  although  for  years  only  those  orphans 
who  had  inherited  at  least  a  meagre  property 
were  handed  over  to  a  public  guardian.  Those 
whose  parents  had  left  them  absolutely  nothing 
were  allowed  to  care  for  themselves^ — as  if  the 
whole  body  of  doctrine  contained  in  the  phrase, 
''there  is  no  wealth  but  life,"  had  never  entered 
into  the  mind  of  man.  Because  these  courts  are 
dealing  with  the  children  in  their  social  and 
everyday  relations  they  have  made  the  astound- 
ing discovery  that  even  a  penniless  child  needs 
the  care  and  defense  of  the  State. 

The  schools  for  Reform  are  those  which  are  in- 
augurating the  most  advanced  education  in 
agriculture  and  manual  arts.  A  bewildered 
foreign  parent  comes  from  time  to  time  to  Hull- 
House,  asking  that  his  boy  be  sent  to  a  school  to 
learn  farming,  basing  his  request  upon  the  fact 
that  his  neighbor's  boy  has  been  sent  to  "a  nice 
green,  country-place.''  It  is  carefully  explained 
that  the  neighbor's  boy  was  bad,  and  was  ar- 
rested and  sent  away  because  of  his  badness. 
After  much  conversation,  the  disappointed  parent 
sometimes  understands,  but  he  often  goes  away 
82 


IMMIGRANTS  IN  CITY  GOVERNMENT 

shaking  his  head,  and  some  such  words  as  these 
issue :  "I  have  been  in  this  country  for  five  years, 
and  have  never  gotten  anything  yet."  At  other 
times  it  is  successfully  explained  to  the  man  that 
the  city  assumes  that  he  is  looking  out  for  him- 
self and  taking  care  of  his  own  boy,  but  it  ought 
to  be  possible  to  make  him  to  see  that  if  he  feels 
that  his  son  needs  the  education  of  a  farm  school, 
that  it  lies  with  him  to  agitate  the  subject  and  to 
vote  for  the  man  who  will  secure  such  schools. 
He  might  well  look  amazed,  were  this  advice 
tendered  him,  for  these  questions  have  never  been 
presented  to  him  to  vote  upon.  Because  he  does 
not  eagerly  discuss  the  tariff  or  other  remote  sub- 
jects which  the  political  parties  present  to  him 
from  time  to  time  we  assume  that  he  is  not  to  be 
trusted  to  vote  on  the  education  of  his  child,  al- 
though there  is  no  doubt  that  the  one  thing  his 
ancestors  decided  upon,  from  the  days  of  bows 
and  arrows,  was  the  sort  of  training  each  one 
should  give  his  son. 

The  fine  education  that  is  given  to  a  juvenile 
offender  may  indicate  a  certain  compunction  on 
the  part  of  the  State.  Quite  as  men  formerly 
gloried  in  warfare  and  now  apologize  for  it,  as 
they  formerly  went  out  to  spoil  their  enemies  and 
now  go  to  civilize  them,  so  civil  governments, 
while  continuing  to  maintain  prisons,  have  become 
83 


NEWER   IDEALS   OF  PEACE 

more  or  less  ashamed  of  them,  and  are  already  ex- 
perimenting in  better  ways  to  elevate  and  reform 
criminals  than  by  the  way  of  violence  and  impris- 
onment. We  have  already  said  in  America  that 
neither  a  gallows  nor  an  unmitigated  prison  shall 
ever  exist  for  a  child. 

In  the  matter  of  public  charities,  also,  we  are 
not  timid  as  to  extending  the  function  of  the 
government.    We  build  enormous  city  hospitals 
and  almhouses;  we  care  with  tenderness  for  the 
defective  and  the  dependent;  but  for  that  great 
mass  of  people  just  beyond  the  line,  from  whom 
they  are  constantly  recruited,  we  do  practically 
nothing.    It  has  been  said  that  if  a  workingman 
in  New  York  falls  a  victim  to  pneumonia,  he  is 
taken  to  a  hospital  and  given  skilled  treatment; 
if  it  leaves  him  tubercular  the  city  will  have  a 
care  over  him,  and  valiantly  will  stand  by,  put- 
ting him  into  a  public  sanatorium,  providing  him 
with  nutritious  food  and  fresh  air  until  his  re- 
covery.   But  if  he  is  turned  away  from  the  hos- 
pital without  tuberculosis,  merely  too  depleted 
and  wretched  to  go  back  to  his  regular  employ- 
ment, then  the  city  can  do  nothing  for  him  unless 
he  be  ready  to  call  himself  an  out-and-out  pauper. 
We  are  afraid  of  the  notion  of  governmental 
function  which  would  minister  to  the  primitive 
needs  of  the  mass  of  the  people,  although  we  are 
84 


IMMIGRANTS  IN  CITY  GOVERNMENT 


quite  ready  to  care  for  him  whom  misfortune  or 
disease  has  made  the  exception.  It  is  really  the 
rank  and  file,  the  average  citizen,  who  is  ignored 
by  the  government,  while  he  works  out  his  real 
problems  through  other  agencies,  although  he  is 
scolded  for  staying  at  home  on  election  day,  and 
for  refusing  to  be  interested  in  issues  which  really 
do  not  concern  him. 

It  is  comparatively  easy  to  understand  the 
punitive  point  of  view  which  seeks  to  suppress, 
or  the  philanthropic  which  seeks  to  palliate;  but 
it  is  much  more  difficult  to  formulate  that  city 
government  which  is  adapted  to  our  present 
normal  living.  As  over  against  the  survivals  of 
the  first  two,  excellent  and  necessary  as  they  are, 
we  have  but  the  few  pubHc  parks  and  baths,  the 
few  band  concerts  and  recreation  piers — always 
excepting,  of  course,  the  public  schools  and  the 
social  activities  slowly  centering  around  them; 
for  public  education  has  long  been  a  passion  in 
America,  and  we  seem  to  have  been  willing  to 
make  that  an  exception  to  our  general  theory  of 
government. 

While  governmental  functions  have  shown  this 
remarkable  adaptation  and  growth  in  relation  to 
the  youth,  whether  he  be  in  the  public  schools,  in 
the  Juvenile  Court  or  in  the  reformatory,  we 
hesitate  to  assume  toward  the  adult  this  temper  of 
85 


NEWER  IDEALS   OF  PEACE 


the  educator  who  humbly  follows  and  at  the  same 
confidently  leads  the  little  child.    While  the 
State  spends  millions  of  dollars  and  employs 
thousands  of  servants  to  nurture  and  heal  the 
sick  and  defective,  it  steadfastly  refuses  to  ex- 
tend its  kindliness  to  the  normal  working  man. 
The  Socialists  alone  constantly  appeal  for  this 
extension.    They  refuse,  however,  to  deal  with 
the  present  State  and  constantly  take  refuge  in  the 
formulae  of  a  new  scholasticism.    Their  orators 
are  busily  engaged  in  establishing  two  substitutes 
for  human  nature  which  they  call  ''proletarian'' 
and  "capitalist.''    They  ignore  the  fact  that  vary- 
ing, imperfect  human  nature  is  incalculable,  and 
that  to  eliminate  its  varied  and  constantly  chang- 
ing elements  is  to  face  all  the  mistakes  and  mis- 
calculations which  gathered  around  the  "fallen 
man,"  or  the  "economic  man,"  or  any  other  of 
the  fixed  norms  which  have  from  time  to  time 
been  substituted  for  expanding  and  developing 
human  life.    In  time  "the  proletarian"  and  "the 
capitalist"  will  become  the  impedimenta  which  it 
will  be  necessary  to  clear  away  in  order  to  make 
room  for  the  mass  of  living  and  breathing  citizens 
with  whom  self-government  must  eventually  deal. 

There  is  no  doubt  that  the  existence  of  the  mass, 
the  mere  size  of  the  modern  city,  increases  the 
difficulty  of  the  situation.    Charles  Booth's  maps 

86 


IMMIGRANTS  IN  CITY  GOVERNMENT 


portraying  the  standard  of  living  for  the  people 
of  London  afford  almost  the  only  attempt  at  a 
general  social  survey  of  a  modern  city,  at  least  so 
far  as  it  may  be  predetermined  from  the  standard 
of  income.  From  his  accompanying  twelve  vol- 
umes may  be  deduced  the  occupations  of  the  peo- 
ple, with  their  real  wages,  their  family  budget  and 
their  culture  level,  and,  to  a  certain  extent,  their 
recreations  and  spiritual  life.  If  one  gives  one's 
self  over  to  a  moment  of  musing  on  this  mass  of 
information,  so  huge  and  so  accurate,  one  is  al- 
most instinctively  aware  that  any  radical  changes, 
so  much  needed  in  the  blackest  districts,  must 
largely  come  from  forces  outside  the  life  of  the 
people.  An  enlarged  mental  life  must  come  from 
the  educationalist,  increased  wages  from  the  busi- 
ness interests,  alleviation  of  suffering  from  the 
philanthropists.  What  vehicle  of  correction  is 
provided  for  the  people  themselves,  what  device 
has  been  invented  for  loosing  that  kindliness  and 
mutual  aid  which  is  the  marvel  of  all  charity  vis- 
itors? What  broad  basis  has  been  laid  down 
for  a  modification  of  their  most  genuine  and 
pressing  needs  through  their  own  initiative? 
The  traditional  Government  expresses  its  activity 
in  keeping  the  streets  clean  and  the  district  lighted 
and  policed.  It  is  only  during  the  last  quarter 
of  a  century  that  the  London  County  Council  has 
87 


NEWER   IDEALS   OF  PEACE 


erected  decent  houses,  public  baths,  and  many 
other  devices  for  the  purer  social  life  of  the  peo- 
ple. American  cities  have  gone  no  further, 
although  they  presumably  started  at  working- 
men's  representation  a  hundred  years  ago,  so 
completely  were  the  founders  misled  by  the  name 
of  government,  and  the  temptation  to  substitute 
the  form  of  political  democracy  for  real  self- 
government  dealing  with  advancing  social  ideals. 
Even  now  London  has  twenty-eight  Borough 
Councils,  in  addition  to  the  London  County 
Council  itself,  fifteen  hundred  direct  representa- 
tives of  the  people,  as  over  against  seventy  in 
Chicago  although  the  latter  city  has  a  population 
one-half  as  large.  Paris  has  twenty  Mayors, 
with  corresponding  machinery  for  local  govern- 
ment, as  over  against  the  New  York  concentra- 
tion in  one  huge  City  Hall,  too  often  corrupt. 

In  Germany,  perhaps  more  than  anywhere 
else,  the  government  has  come  to  concern  itself 
with  the  primitive  essential  needs  of  its  working- 
people.  In  their  behalf,  the  Government  has 
forced  industry,  in  the  person  of  the  large  manu- 
facturers, to  make  an  alliance  with  it.  The  man- 
ufacturers are  taxed  for  accident  insurance  of 
workingmen,  for  old-age  pensions  and  sick  bene- 
fits ;  and  a  project  is  being  formed  in  which  they 
shall  bear  the  large  share  of  insurance  against 

88 


IMMIGRANTS  IN  CITY  GOVERNMENT 

non-employment  when  it  has  been  made  clear  that 
non-employment  is  the  result  of  an  economic 
crisis  brought  about  through  the  mal-administra- 
tion  of  finance. 

Germany  proposes  to  regulate  the  maximum 
amount  of  rent  which  landlords  of  certain  types 
of  houses  may  be  permitted  to  require,  quite  as 
the  usury  laws  limit  the  maximum  amount  of 
interest  which  may  be  demanded.  And  yet  in^- 
dustry  in  Germany  has  flourished,  and  this  con- 
trol on  behalf  of  the  normal  workingman  as  he 
faces  life  in  his  daily  vocation  has  apparently 
not  checked  its  systematic  growth,  nor  limited  its 
place  in  the  world's  market.  As  a  result  of  this 
constant  supervision  of  industry,  the  German 
police  although  a  part  of  a  military  government, 
are  constantly  employed  in  the  regulation  of  social 
affairs ;  and  in  these  branches  of  government  it  is 
remarked  that  they  are  dropping  their  military 
tone  and  assuming  toward  the  people  the  attitude 
of  helpers  and  protectors.  The  police  force  in 
Germany  is  the  lowest  executive  organ  of  the  in- 
terior government  and  there  are,  therefore,  as 
many  kinds  of  police  departments  as  there  are 
different  departments  in  this  interior  government. 
They  follow  the  Government  inspectors  of  the 
forest,  the  railways,  the  fields  and  roads,  to  see 
that  their  instructions  are  obeyed.  In  the  De- 
89 


NEWER   IDEALS   OF  PEACE 

partment  of  Public  Health  it  is  the  police  officers 
who  finally  enforce  instructions  in  regard  to  vac- 
cination, meat  inspection,  sale  of  food-stuffs,  and 
the  transportation  of  animals;  in  the  department 
of  factory  inspection  the  police  not  only  enforce 
the  provisions  of  the  factory  laws,  but  they  are 
responsible  for  the  books  in  which  the  wages  paid 
to  minors  are  recorded ;  and  it  is  from  the  police 
stations  that  the  cards  of  the  Government  insur- 
ance for  working-people  are  issued.    Any  special 
investigation  ordered  by  the  legislature  is,  as  a 
matter  of  course,  undertaken  by  the  police.  These 
varied  activities,  of  course,  require  men  of  educa- 
tion and  ability,  and  the  very  extension  of  func- 
tion has  broken  down  the  military  ideal  in  the 
country  where  that  ideal  is  most  firmly  intrenched. 
But  in  a  Republic  founded  upon  a  revulsion  from 
oppressive  government  we  still  keep  the  police 
close  to  their  negative  role  of  preserving  order  and 
arresting  the  criminal.  The  varied  functions  they 
perform  in  Germany  would  be  impossible  in  Amer- 
ica, because  it  would  be  hotly  resented  by  the 
American  business  man  who  will  not  brook  any 
governmental  interference  in  industrial  affairs. 
The  inherited  instinct  that  government  is  natu- 
rally oppressive,  and  that  its  inroads  must  be 
checked,  has  made  it  a  matter  of  principle  and 
patriotism  to  keep  the  functions  of  government 
90 


IMMIGRANTS  IN  CITY  GOVERNMENT 


more  restricted  and  more  military  than  has  be- 
come true  in  military  countries. 

Almost  every  Sunday  in  the  Italian  quarter  in 
which  I  live  various  mutual  benefit  societies  march 
with  fife  and  drum  and  with  a  brave  showing  of 
banners,  celebrating  their  achievement  in  having 
surrounded  themselves  by  at  least  a  thin  wall  of 
protection  against  disaster,  upon  having  set  up 
their  mutual  good  will  against  the  day  of  mis- 
fortune. These  parades  have  all  the  emblems  of 
patriotism;  indeed,  the  associations  present  the 
primitive  core  of  patriotism,  brothers  standing 
by  each  other  against  hostile  forces  from  without. 
I  assure  you  that  no  Fourth  of  July  celebration, 
no  rejoicing  over  the  birth  of  an  heir  to  the 
Italian  throne,  equals  in  heartiness  and  sincerity 
these  simple  celebrations.  Again  one  longs  to 
pour  into  the  government  of  their  adopted  coun- 
try all  this  affection  and  zeal,  this  real  patriot- 
ism. A  system  of  State  insurance  would  be  a 
very  simple  device  and  secure  a  large  return. 

Are  we  in  America  retaining  eighteenth-century 
traditions,  while  Germany  is  gradually  evolving 
into  a  Government  logically  fitted  to  cope  with 
the  industrial  situation  of  the  twentieth  century? 
Do  we  so  fail  to  apprehend  what  democracy  is, 
that  we  are  really  afraid  to  extend  the  functions 
of  municipal  administration  ?  Have  we  lost  that 
91 


NEWER   IDEALS   OF  PEACE 

most  conservative  of  all  beliefs — the  belief  in  the 
average  man,  and  thereby  forfeited  Aristotle's 
ideal  of  a  city  "where  men  live  a  common  life  for 
noble  ends"? 


92 


CHAPTER  IV 


MILITARISM  AND   INDUSTRIAL  LEGISLATION 

American  cities  have  been  slow  to  consider  in- 
dustrial questions  as  germane  to  government, 
and  the  Federal  authorities  have  persistently- 
treated  the  millions  of  immigrants  who  arrive 
every  year  upon  a  political  theory  and  method 
adopted  a  century  ago,  because  both  of  them 
ignore  the  fact  that  the  organization  of  industry 
has  completed  a  revolution  during  that  period. 
The  gigantic  task  of  standardizing  the  successive 
nations  of  immigrants  throughout  the  country  has 
fallen  upon  workmen  because  they  alone  cannot 
ignore  the  actual  industrial  situation.  To  thou- 
sands of  workmen  the  immigration  problem  is  a 
question  of  holding  a  job  against  a  constantly 
lowering  standard  of  living,  and  to  withstand 
this  stream  of  "raw  labor"  means  to  them  the 
maintenance  of  industrial  efficiency  and  of  life 
itself.  Workingmen  are  engaged  in  a  desperate 
struggle  to  maintain  a  standard  of  wages  against 
the  constant  arrival  of  unskilled  immigrants  at  the 
rate  of  three-quarters  of  a  million  a  year,  at  the 
93 


NEWER   IDEALS   OF  PEACE 

very  period  when  the  elaboration  of  machinery 
permits  the  largest  use  of  unskilled  men.  . 

It  may  be  owing  to  the  fact  that  the  working- 
man  is  brought  into  direct  contact  with  the  situa- 
tion as  a  desperate  problem  of  a  living  wage 
against  starvation;  it  may  be  that  wisdom  is  at 
her  old  trick  of  residing  in  the  hearts  of  the 
simple,  or  that  this  new  idealism,  which  is  that  of 
a  reasonable  life  and  labor,  must,  from  the  very 
nature  of  things,  proceed  from  those  who  labor; 
or  possibly  it  may  be  because  amelioration  arises 
whence  it  is  so  sorely  needed;  but  certainly  it  is 
true,  that,  while  the  rest  of  the  country  talks  of 
assimilation  as  if  it  were  a  huge  digestive  appa- 
ratus, the  man  with  whom  the  immigrant  has 
come  most  sharply  into  competition,  has  been 
forced  into  fraternal  relations  with  him. 

Curiously  enough,  however,  as  soon  as  the  im- 
migrant situation  is  frankly  regarded  as  an 
industrial  one,  as  these  men  must  regard  it,  the 
political  aspects  of  the  industrial  situation  is  re- 
vealed in  the  fact  that  trade  organizations  which 
openly  concern  themselves  with  the  immigration 
problem  on  its  industrial  side,  quickly  take  on  the 
paraphernalia  and  machinery  which  have  hitherto 
associated  themselves  only  with  governmental  life 
and  control.  The  trades  unions  have  worked 
out  all  over  again  local  autonomy,  with  central 
94 


INDUSTRIAL  LEGISLATION 


councils  and  national  representative  bodies  and 
the  use  of  the  referendum  vote;  and  they  also 
exhibit  many  of  the  features  of  political  cor- 
ruption and  manipulation. 

The  first  real  lesson  in  self-government  to 
many  immigrants  has  come  through  the  organi- 
zation of  labor  unions,  and  it  could  come  in  no 
other  way,  for  the  union  alone  has  appealed  to 
their  necessities.  One  sees  the  first  indication 
of  an  idealism  arising  out  of  these  primal  neces- 
sities, and  at  moments  one  dares  to  hope  that  it 
may  be  sturdy  enough  and  sufficiently  founded 
upon  experience  to  make  some  impression  upon 
the  tremendous  immigration  situation. 

The  movements  embodying  a  new  idealism 
have  traditionally  sought  refuge  with  those  who 
are  near  to  starvation.  Although  the  spiritual 
struggle  is  associated  with  the  solitary  garret  of 
the  impassioned  dreamer,  it  may  be  that  the  ideal- 
ism fitted  to  our  industrial  democracy  will  be 
evolved  in  crowded  sewer  ditches  and  in  noisy 
factories.  It  may  be  contended  that  this  re- 
markable coming  together  of  the  workingman  and 
the  immigrant  has  been  the  result  of  an  economic 
pressure,  and  is  without  merit  or  idealism,  and 
that  the  trades  union  record  on  Chinese  exclusion 
and  negro  discrimination  has  been  damaging. 
Be  that  as  it  may,  this  assimilation  between  the 
95 


NEWER  IDEALS   OF  PEACE 


immigrant  and  the  workingman  has  exhibited 
amazing  strength,  which  may  be  illustrated  from 
two  careful  studies  made  in  two  different  parts 
of  the  country. 

To  quote  first  from  a  study  made  from  the 
University  of  Wisconsin  of  the  stock  yards  strike 
which  took  place  in  Chicago  in  1904  ^ :  'Terhaps 
the  fact"  of  the  greatest  social  significance  is  that 
this  was  not  merely  a  strike  of  skilled  labor  for 
the  unskilled,  but  was  a  strike  of  Americanized 
Irish,  Germans,  and  Bohemians,  in  behalf  of 
Slovaks,  Poles,  and  Lithuanians.  .  .  .  This  sub- 
stitution of  races  in  the  stock  yards  has  been  a 
continuing  process  for  twenty  years.  The  older 
nationalities  have  already  disappeared  from  the 
unskilled  occupations,  and  the  substitution  of 
races  has  evidently  run  along  the  line  of  lower 
standard  of  living.  The  latest  arrivals,  the 
Lithuanians  and  Slovaks,  are  probably  the  most 
oppressed  of  the  peasants  of  Europe.''  The 
visitors  who  attended  the  crowded  meetings  of 
the  strikers  during  the  summer  of  1904  and  heard 
the  same  address  successively  translated  by  in- 
terpreters into  six  or  eight  languages,  who  saw 
the  respect  shown  to  the  most  uncouth  of  the 
speakers  by  the  skilled  American  men  represent- 

^  Trade  Unionism  and  Labor  Problems,  by  John  R.  Com- 
mons, page  248. 

96 


INDUSTRIAL  LEGISLATION 


ing  a  distinctly  superior  standard  of  life  and 
thought,  could  never  doubt  the  power  of  the  labor 
organizations  for  amalgamation,  whatever  opin- 
ion they  might  hold  concerning  their  other  values. 
This  may  be  said  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  great 
industrial  disturbances  have  arisen  from  the 
under-cutting  of  wages  by  the  lowering  of  racial 
standard.  Certainly  the  most  notable  of  these 
have  taken  place  in  those  industries  and  at  those 
places  in  which  the  importation  of  immigrants 
has  been  deliberately  fostered  as  a  wage-lowering 
weapon ;  and  even  in  those  disturbances  and  under 
the  shock  and  strain  of  a  long  strike,  disintegra- 
tion did  not  come  along  the  line  of  race  cleavage. 

The  other  study  was  made  in  the  anthracite 
coal  fields,  and  was  undertaken  from  the  Uni- 
versity of  Pennsylvania  ^ :  "The  United  Mine 
Workers  of  America  is  taking  men  of  a  score  of 
nationalities,  English-speaking  and  Slav,  men  of 
widely  different  creeds,  languages,  and  customs, 
and  of  varying  powers  of  industrial  competition, 
and  is  welding  them  into  an  industrial  brother- 
hood, each  part  of  which  can  at  least  understand 
of  the  others  that  they  are  working  for  one  great 
and  common  end.  This  bond  of  unionism  is 
stronger  than  one  can  readily  imagine  who  has 
not  seen  its  mysterious  workings  or  who  has  not 

^"The  Slav  Invasion,"  by  F.  J.  Warne,  pages  ii8,  119. 
1  97 


NEWER  IDEALS   OF  PEACE 

been  a  victim  of  its  members'  newly  found  en- 
thusiasm. It  is  to-day  the  strongest  tie  that  can 
bind  together  147,000  mine  workers  and  the 
thousands  dependent  upon  them.  It  is  more  than 
religion,  more  than  the  social  ties  which  hold 
together  members  of  the  same  community." 

It  was  during  a  remarkable  struggle  on  the 
part  of  this  amalgamation  of  men  from  all  coun- 
tries, that  the  United  States  government,  in  spite 
of  itself,  was  driven  to  take  a  hand  in  an  industrial 
situation,  owing  to  the  long  strain  and  the  intol- 
erable suffering  entailed  upon  the  whole  country. 
Even  then,  however,  the  Government  endeavored 
to  confine  its  investigation  to  the  mere  commer- 
cial questions  of  tonnage  and  freight  rates  with 
their  political  implications,  and  it  was  only  when 
an  aroused  and  moralized  public  opinion  insisted 
upon  it  that  the  national  commission  was  driven 
to  consider  the  human  aspects  of  the  case.  Be- 
cause of  this  public  opinion,  columns  of  news- 
papers and  days  of  investigation  were  given  to 
the  discussion  of  the  deeds  of  violence,  discus- 
sions having  nothing  to  do  with  the  original  de- 
mands of  the  strikers  and  entering  only  into  the 
value  set  upon  human  life  by  each  of  the  contesting 
parties.    Did  the  union  encourage  violence  against 
non-union  men,  or  did  it  really  do  everything  to 
suppress  violence?   Did  it  live  up  to  its  creed 
98 


INDUSTRIAL  LEGISLATION 


which  was  to  maintain  a  standard  of  living  that 
families  might  be  properly  housed  and  protected 
from  debilitating  toil  and  disease,  and  that  chil- 
dren might  be  nurtured  into  American  citizenship? 
Did  the  operators  protect  their  men  as  far  as  pos- 
sible from  mine  damp,  from  length  of  hours  prov- 
en by  experience  to  be  exhausting?  Did  they  pay 
a  wage  to  the  mine  laborer  sufficient  to  allow  him 
to  send  his  children  to  school?  Questions  such 
as  these,  a  study  of  the  human  problem,  invaded 
the  commission  day  after  day  during  the  sitting. 
One  felt  for  the  moment  the  first  wave  of  a  rising 
tide  of  humanitarianism,  until  the  normal  ideals 
of  the  laborer  to  secure  food  and  shelter  for  his 
family,  a  security  for  his  own  old  age,  and  a 
larger  opportunity  for  his  children  became  the 
ideals  of  democratic  government. 

Let  us  imagine  the  result  if,  during  the  long 
anthracite  strike,  the  humane  instinct  had  so  over- 
mastered the  minds  of  the  strikers,  and  so  exalted 
their  passions  that  they  had  lifted  a  hand  against 
no  man,  even  though  he  seemed  to  be  endanger- 
ing their  cause  before  their  eyes.  Such  a  result 
might  have  come  about,  partly  because  the  de- 
struction of  life  had  become  abhorrent  and  im- 
possible to  them  engaged  as  they  were  in  the 
endeavor  to  raise  life  in  the  coal  regions  to  a 
higher  level,  and  partly  because  they  would  have 

99 


NEWER  IDEALS   OF  PEACE 


scorned  to  destroy  an  enemy  in  order  to  achieve  a 
mere  negative  result  when  the  power  lay  within 
themselves  to  convert  him  into  an  ally,  when 
they  might  have  made  him  a  source  of  help 
and  power,  a  comrade  of  the  same  undertak- 
ing.    If  the  element  of  battle,  of  mere  self- 
seeking,  could  be  eliminated  from  strikes,  if  they 
could  remain  a  sheer  uprising  of  the  oppressed 
and  underpaid  to  a  self-conscious  recognition  of 
their  condition,  so  unified,  so  irresistible  as  to 
sweep  all  the  needy  within  its  flood,  ^e  should 
have  a  tide  rising,  not  to  destruction,  but  to 
beneficence.    Let  us  imagine  the  state  of  pub- 
lic feeling  if  there  had  been  absolutely  no  act  of 
violence  traceable,  directly  or  indirectly,  to  the 
union  miners;  if  during  the  long  months  of  the 
strike  the  great  body  of  miners  could  have  added 
the  sanction  of  sustained  conduct  to  their  creed. 
Public  sympathy  would  have  led  to  an  under- 
standing of  the  need  these  miners  were  trying  to 
meet,  and  the  American  nation  itself  might  have  * 
been  ready  to  ask  for  legislation  concerning  the 
minimum  wage,  and  for  protection  to  life  and 
limb,  equal  to  the  legislation  of  New  Zealand  or 
Germany.    But  because  the  element  of  warfare 
unhappily  did  exist,  government  got  back  to  its 
old  business  of  repression. 
To  preserve  law  and  order  is  obviously  the 

lOO 


INDUSTRIAL  LEGISLATION 

function  of  government  everywhere;  and  yet  m 
our  complicated  modern  society,  especially  as 
thousands  of  varied  peoples  are  crow^ded  inito 
cities,  it  is  not  always  easy  to  see  just  where  real 
social  order  lies.  The  officials  themselves  are 
sometimes  perplexed,  and  at  other  times  delib- 
erately use  the  devices  of  government  for  their 
own  ends.  We  may  take  once  more  in  illustra- 
tion the  great  strike  in  the  Chicago  stock-yards. 
The  immediate  object  of  the  strike  was  the  pro- 
tection of  the  wages  of  the  unskilled  men  from 
a  cut  of  one  cent  per  hour,  although,  of  course, 
the  unions  of  skilled  men  felt  that  this  first  in- 
vasion of  the  wages  increased  through  the  efforts 
of  the  union,  would  be  but  the  entering  wedge  of 
an  attempt  to  cut  wages  in  all  the  trades  repre- 
sented in  the  stock-yards.  Owing  to  the  refusal 
on  the  part  of  the  unions  to  accept  arbitration 
offered  by  the  packers  at  an  embarrassing  mo- 
ment, and  because  of  the  failure  of  the  unions  to 
carry  out  the  terms  of  a  contract,  the  strike  in  its 
early  stages  completely  lost  the  sympathy  of  that 
large  part  of  the  public  dominated  by  ideals  of 
business  honor  and  fair  dealing.  It  lost,  too,  the 
sympathy  of  that  growing  body  of  organized 
labor  which  is  steadily  advancing  in  a  regard 
for  the  validity  of  the  contract,  and  is  faithfully 
cherishing  the  hope  that  in  time  the  trades  unions 

lOI 


NEWER  IDEALS   OF  PEACE 

may  universally  attain  an  accredited  business 
standing. 

The  leaders  after  the  first  ten  days  were,  there- 
fore, forced  to  make  the  most  of  the  purely  human 
appeal  which  lay  in  the  situation  itself,  that 
30,000  men,  including  the  allied  trades,  were 
losing  weeks  of  wages,  with  a  possible  chance  of 
the  destruction  of  their  unions  on  behalf  of  the 
unskilled  who  were  the  newly  arrived  Poles  and 
Lithuanians,  unable  as  yet  to  look  out  for  them- 
selves. Owing  to  the  irregular  and  limited 
hours  of  work — a  condition  quite  like  that  pre- 
vailing on  the  London  docks  before  the  great 
strike  of  the  dockers^ — the  weekly  wage  of  these 
unskilled  men  was  exceptionally  low,  and  the 
plea  of  the  strikers  was  based  upon  the  duty  of  the 
strong  to  the  weak.  A  chivalric  call  was  issued 
that  the  standard  of  life  might  be  raised  to  that 
designated  as  American,  and  that  this  mass  of  un- 
skilled men  might  secure  an  education  for  their 
children.  Of  course  no  appeal  could  have  been 
so  strong  as  this  purely  human  one  which  united 
for  weeks  thousands  of  men  of  a  score  of  nation- 
alities into  that  solidarity  which  only  comes 
through  a  self-sacrificing  devotion  to  an  absorb- 
ing cause. 

The  strike  involved  much  suf¥ering  and  many 
unforeseen  complications.    At  the  end  of  eight 

102 


INDUSTRIAL  LEGISLATION 


weeks  the  union  leaders  made  the  best  terms 
possible.  Through  these  terms  the  skilled  work- 
ers were  guaranteed  against  a  reduction  in  wages, 
but  no  provision  was  made  for  the  unskilled  in 
whose  behalf  the  strike  had  at  first  been  under- 
taken. Although  the  hard-pressed  leaders  were 
willing  to  make  this  concession,  the  politicians  in 
the  meanwhile  had  seen  the  great  value  of  the 
human  sentiment  which  bases  its  appeal  on  the 
need  of  the  under  dog  and  which  had  successfully 
united  this  mass  of  workingmen  into  a  new  com- 
radeship with  the  immigrants.  The  appeal  was 
infinitely  more  valuable  than  any  merely  political 
cry,  and  the  fact  that  the  final  terms  of  settlement 
were  submitted  to  a  referendum  vote  at  once  gave 
the  local  politicians  a  chance  to  avail  themselves 
of  this  big,  loosely  defined  sympathy.  They  did 
avail  themselves  of  this  in  so  dramatic  a  manner 
that  they  almost  succeeded,  solely  upon  that  ap- 
peal, in  taking  the  strike  out  of  the  hands  of  the 
legitimate  officers  and  placing  it  in  their  own 
hands  for  their  own  political  ends. 

The  situation  was  a  typical  one,  exemplifying 
the  real  aim  of  popular  government  with  its  con- 
cern for  primitive  needs,  forced  to  seek  expres- 
sion outside  of  the  organized  channels  of  govern- 
ment. If  the  militia  could  have  been  called  in, 
government  would  have  been  placed  even  more 
103 


NEWER  IDEALS   OF  PEACE 


dramatically  in  the  position  of  the  oppressor  of 
popular  self-government.  The  phenomenal  good 
order,  the  comparative  lack  of  violence  on  the 
part  of  the  striking  workmen,  gave  no  chance  for 
the  bringing  in  of  the  militia.  The  city  politician 
v^^as  of  course  very  much  disappointed,  for  it  would 
have  afforded  him  an  opening  to  put  the  odium 
of  this  traditional  opposition  of  government,  an 
opposition  which  has  always  been  most  dramati- 
cally embodied  in  the  soldier,  upon  the  political 
party  dominating  the  State  but  not  the  city.  It 
would  have  given  the  city  politician  an  excellent 
opportunity  to  show  the  concern  of  himself  and 
his  party  for  the  real  people,  as  over  against  the 
attitude  of  the  party  dominating  the  State.  But 
because  the  militia  was  not  called,  his  scheme 
failed,  and  the  legitimate  strike  leaders  who,  al- 
though they  passed  through  much  tribulation 
because  of  this  political  interference,  did  not 
eventually  lose  control. 

The  situation  in  the  Chicago  stock-yards  also 
afforded  an  excellent  epitome  of  the  fact  that 
government  so  often  finds  itself,  not  only  in  oppo- 
sition to  the  expressed  will  of  the  people  making 
the  demand  at  the  moment,  but  apparently  against 
the  best  imstincts  of  the  mass  of  the  citizens  as  a 
whole. 

For  years  the  city  administration  had  so  pro 
Z04 


INDUSTRIAL  LEGISLATION 

tected  the  property  interests  invested  in  the  stock- 
yards, that  none  of  the  sanitary  ordinances  had 
ever  been  properly  enforced.  The  sickening 
stench  and  the  scum  on  the  branch  of  the  river 
known  as  Bubbly  Creek  at  times  made  that  section 
of  the  city  unendurable.  The  smoke  ordinances 
were  openly  ignored,  nor  did  the  meat  inspector 
ever  seriously  interfere  with  business,  being  quite 
willing  to  have  meat  sold  in  Chicago  which  had 
not  passed  the  inspection  for  foreign  markets. 
The  water  steals,  too,  for  which  the  stock-yards 
were  at  one  time  notorious,  must  have  been  more 
or  less  known  to  certain  officials.  But  all  this 
merely  corrupted  a  limited  number  of  inspectors, 
and  although  their  corruption  was  complete  and 
involved  entire  administrations,  it  did  not  actually 
touch  large  numbers  of  persons.  During  the 
strike  of  1904,  however,  1,200  policemen,  actual 
men  possessed  of  human  sensibilities,  were  called 
upon  to  patrol  the  yards  inside  and  out.  There  is 
no  doubt  that  the  police  inspector  of  the  district 
thoroughly  represented  the  alliance  of  the  City 
Hall  with  the  business  interests,  that  he  did  not 
mean  to  discover  anything  which  was  derogatory 
to  the  packers  nor  to  embarrass  them  in  any  way 
during  the  conduct  of  the  strike.  Had  these 
1,200  men,  more  than  a  regiment  in  numbers, 
been  a  regiment  in  training  and  tradition,  they, 
105 


NEWER   IDEALS   OF  PEACE 


too,  would  have  seen  nothing,  and  would  have 
been  content  at  heart,  as  they  were  obliged  to  be 
in  conduct,  to  have  arrested  the  strikers  on  the 
slightest  provocation,  and  to  have  protected  the 
strike-breakers. 

But  they  were,  in  point  of  fact,  called  upon  to 
face  a  very  peculiar  situation,  because  of  the  type 
of  men  and  women  who  formed  the  bulk  of  the 
strike-breakers,  and  because,  during  the  first 
weeks  of  the  strike,  these  men  and  women  were 
kept  constantly  inside  the  yards,  day  and  night. 
In  order  to  hold  them  at  all,  discipline  outside  of 
working  hours  was  thoroughly  relaxed,  and  the 
policemen  in  charge  of  the  yards,  while  there 
ostensibly  to  enforce  law  and  order,  were  obliged 
every  night  to  connive  at  prize-fighting,  at  open 
gambling,  and  at  prostitution.  They  were  there, 
not  to  enforce  law  and  order  as  it  defines  itself 
in  the  minds  of  the  bulk  of  healthy-minded 
citizens,  but  only  to  keep  the  strikers  from  molest- 
ing the  non-union  workers.  This  was  certainly 
commendable,  but,  after  all,  only  part  of  their  real 
duty. 

Because  they  were  normal  men  living  in  the 
midst  of  normal  life  and  not  in  barracks,  they 
were  shocked  by  the  law-breaking  which'  they 
were  ordered  to  protect,  and  much  drawn  in 
sympathy  to  the  strikers  whom  they  were  sup- 
io6 


INDUSTRIAL  LEGISLATION 


posed  to  regard  as  public  enemies.  An  investi- 
gator who  interviewed  one  hundred  poHcemen 
found  only  one  who  did  not  frankly  extol  the 
virtues  of  the  strikers  as  over  against  the  shock- 
ing vices  of  the  imported  men.  This,  of  course, 
was  an  extreme  case  brought  about  by  the  unusual 
and  peculiar  type  of  the  imported  strike-breakers. 
There  is,  however,  trustworthy  evidence  incor- 
porated in  affidavits  which  were  at  the  time  sub- 
mitted to  the  Mayor  of  Chicago,  concerning  the 
unlawful  conduct  of  the  men  who  were  under  the 
protection  of  the  city  police. 

It  was  hard  for  a  patriot  not  to  feel  jealous  of 
the  union  and  of  the  enthusiasm  of  those  newly 
emigrated  citizens.  They  poured  out  their  grati- 
tude and  affection  upon  this  first  big  friendly 
force  which  had  offered  them  help  in  their  des- 
perate struggle  in  the  New  World.  This  devo- 
tion, this  comradeship,  and  this  fine  esprit  de  corps 
should  have  been  won  by  the  Government  itself 
from  these  newly  arrived,  scared,  and  untrained 
citizens.  The  union  was  that  which  had  con- 
cerned itself  with  the  real  struggle  for  life,  shelter, 
a  chance  to  work,  and  bread  for  their  children. 
It  had  come  to  them  in  a  language  they  could 
understand,  through  men  with  interests  akin  to 
their  own,  and  it  gave  them  both  their  first  chance 
to  express  themselves  through  a  democratic  vote, 
107 


NEWER   IDEALS   OF  PEACE 

and  an  opportunity  to  register  by  a  ballot  their  real 
opinion  upon  a  very  important  matter. 

They  used  the  referendum  votes,  the  latest  and 
perhaps  the  most  clever  device  of  democratic  gov- 
ernment, and  yet  they  used  it  to  decide  a  ques- 
tion which  the  government  supposed  to  be  quite 
outside  its  realm.    When  they  left  the  old  coun- 
try, the  government  of  America  held  their  deep- 
est hopes,  and  represented  that  which  they  believed 
would  obtain  for  them  the  fullness  of  life  denied 
them  in  the  lands  of  oppressive  governments.  It 
is  a  curious  commentary  on  the  fact  that  we  have 
not  yet  attained  self-government  when  the  real  and 
legitimate  objects  of  men's  desires  must  still  be  in- 
corporated in  those  voluntary  groups  for  which 
the  government,  when  it  does  its  best,  can  only 
afford  protection  from  interference.    As  the  re- 
ligious revivalist  looks  with  longing  upon  the 
fervor  of  a  single-tax  meeting,  as  the  orthodox 
Jew  sees  his  son  stay  away  from  Yom  Kippur 
service  in  order  to  pour  all  his  rehgious  fervor, 
his  precious  zeal  for  righteousness  which  has  been 
gathered  through  the  centuries,  into  the  Socialist 
Labor  Party — so  a  patriot  finds  himself  exclaim- 
ing to  the  immigrant,  like  another  Andrea  del 
Sarto  to  his  wife,  "Oh,  but  what  do  they — what 
do  they  to  please  you  more?" 
The  stock-yards  strike  afforded  an  example  of 
io8 


INDUSTRIAL  LEGISLATION 


the  national  appeal  subordinated  to  an  appeal 
made  in  the  name  of  labor.  During  the  early- 
stages  of  the  strike  it  was  discovered  that  newly 
arrived  Macedonians  were  taking  many  of  the 
places  vacated  by  the  strikers.  One  of  the  most 
touching  scenes  during  the  strike  was  the  groups 
of  Macedonians  who  would  sit  together  in  the 
twilight  playing  on  primitive  pipes  singularly 
like  the  one  which  is  associated  with  the  great  god 
Pan.  The  slender  song  would  carry  amazingly 
in  the  smoke-bedimmed  air,  affecting  the  spec- 
tator with  a  curious  sense  of  incongruity. 

When  the  organized  labor  of  Chicago  discov- 
ered that  the  strikers'  places  were  taken  by  Greeks, 
the  unions  threatened,  unless  the  Greeks  were 
"called  of¥,''  to  boycott  the  Greek  fruit-dealers  all 
over  the  city,  who  with  their  street  stands  are  sin- 
gularly dependent  upon  the  patronage  of  working- 
men.  The  fact  that  the  strike-breakers  were 
Macedonians,  as  it  happened,  was  an  additional 
advantage  at  the  moment;  for  the  Greeks  have 
been  much  concerned  to  make  it  clear  that  Mace- 
donia belongs  to  Greece,  and  have  hotly  resented 
the  efforts  of  Bulgaria  to  establish  a  protectorate 
over  the  country.  They  therefore  responded  at 
once  to  this  acknowledgment  of  their  claim,  and, 
partly  to  show  that  the  Macedonians  and  Greeks 
were  couiitrymen,  partly  because  they  resented 
109 


NEWER  IDEALS   OF  PEACE 

the  implication  that  a  Greek  could  act  a  cowardly 
part  in  any  situation,  and  also,  doubtless,  because 
they  were  merchants  threatened  with  loss  of  trade, 
they  made  superhuman  efforts  to  clear  the  yards 
of  Macedonians.    This  they  accomplished  in  a  re- 
markably short  time.    So  reckless  were  they  in 
the  methods  they  used  that  it  was  common  gossip 
throughout  the  Greek  colony  that  strike-breakers 
would  be  refused  the  comforts  of  religion  by  the 
Greek  priests  in  the  city,  although  doubtless  this 
rumor  was  unfounded.    This  utter  recklessness 
of  method,  this  determination  to  deter  strike- 
breaking at  any  cost,  is,  of  course,  a  revelation  of 
the  war  element  which  is  an  essential  part  of  any 
strike.    The  appeal  to  "loyalty''  is  the  nearest 
approach  to  a  moral  appeal  which  can  be  safely 
made  in  the  midst  of  a  war  of  any  sort.  During 
a  long  strike  one  result  of  the  non-moral  appeal 
is  to  confuse  the  situation  so  that  it  becomes  ut- 
terly impossible  to  tell  how  many  men  refuse  to 
become  strike-breakers  because  they  are  terror- 
ized and  how  many  stay  away  from  conviction. 
The  non-moral  appeal  not  only  sins  against  the 
principles  advocated  by  trades  unionists,  but  it 
contradicts  itself  and  brings  grreat  confusion  into 
the  situation,  as  war  ideals  always  do  when  thrust 
into  a  peaceful  society.    It  was,  for  instance, 
quite  impossible  to  tell  whether  the  lowering  in 
no 


INDUSTRIAL  LEGISLATION 


the  type  of  man  who  was  willing  to  take  a  strik- 
er's place,  so  that  at  last  only  very  ignorant  men 
from  the  southern  plantations  could  be  induced 
to  work,  was  due  to  a  species  of  class  conscious- 
ness, a  response  to  the  demand  felt  so  strongly  by 
labor  men — "Thou  shalt  not  take  thy  neighbor's 
job" — or  whether  workingmen  are  becoming  so 
afraid  to  take  striker's  places  that  these  places 
must  at  last  be  given  to  men  who  have  come  from 
such  remote  parts  of  the  country  that  "they  do  not 
know  enough  to  be  afraid."  The  unions  them- 
selves could  take  no  accounting  of  their  real 
strength  because  of  the  terrorism  which  had  be- 
come thrust  into  the  situation.  And  yet  all  that 
the  stock-yards  workers  were  demanding  through 
this  long  and  disastrous  strike,  was  the  minimum 
wage  which  has  been  guaranteed  by  conservative 
governments  elsewhere,  and  is  recognized  even  in 
the  United  States  in  much  governmental  work 
under  the  contracts  of  civil  or  Federal  authorities. 
So  timid  are  American  cities,  however,  in  dealing 
with  this  perfectly  reasonable  subject  of  wages 
in  its  relation  to  municipal  employees,  that  when 
they  do  prescribe  a  minimum  wage  for  city  con- 
tract work,  they  allow  it  to  fall  into  the  hands  of 
the  petty  politician  and  to  become  part  of  a 
political  game,  making  no  effort  to  give  it  a 
dignified  treatment  in  relation  to  the  cost  of  liv- 
III 


NEWER  IDEALS   OF  PEACE 


ing  and  to  the  margin  of  leisure.  In  this  the  Eng- 
lish cities  have  anticipated  us,  both  as  to  time  and 
legitimate  procedure.  Have  Americans  formed 
a  sort  of  "imperialism  of  virtue/^  holding  on  to 
preconceived  ideals  of  government  and  insisting 
that  they  must  fit  all  the  people  who  come  to  our 
shores,  even  though  they  crush  the  most  promis- 
ing bits  of  self-expression  in  the  process  ?  Is  the 
American  attitude  toward  self-government  like 
that  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  towards  civilization, 
save  that  he  goes  forth  to  rule  all  the  nations  of 
the  earth  by  one  pattern,  while  we  remain  at  home 
and  bid  them  to  rule  themselves  by  one  pattern? 
We  firmly  decline  not  only  to  consider  matters  of 
industry  and  commerce  as  germane  to  govern- 
ment, but  we  also  decline  to  bring  men  together 
upon  that  most  natural  and  inevitable  of  all  foun- 
dations, their  industrial  needs. 

The  government  which  refuses  to  consider  mat- 
ters of  this  sort,  or  at  least  waits  until  their  neglect 
becomes  a  scandal  before  it  consents  to  deal  with 
them,  as  a  result  of  this  caution  forces  the  most 
patriotic  citizens  to  ignore  the  Government  and  to 
embody  their  scruples  and  hopes  of  progress  in 
voluntary  organizations.  To  be  afraid  to  extend 
the  functions  of  government  may  be  to  lose  what 
we  have.  A  government  has  always  received 
feeble  support  from  its  constituents  as  soon  as  its 

113 


INDUSTRIAL  LEGISLATION 


demands  appeared  childish  or  remote.  Citizens 
inevitably  neglect  or  abandon  civic  duty,  when 
their  government  no  longer  embodies  their  gen- 
uine desires.  It  is  useless  to  hypnotize  ourselves 
by  unreal  talk  of  colonial  ideas,  and  of  our  pa- 
triotic duty  towards  immigrants  as  though  the  sit- 
uation was  one  demanding  the  passage  of  a  set 
of  resolutions  when  we  fail  to  realize  that  the  na- 
tion can  be  saved  only  by  patriots  who  are  pos- 
sessed of  a  contemporaneous  knowledge. 

As  industrial  relations  imply  peaceful  relations, 
under  a  certain  rough  reorganization  and  recon- 
struction of  governmental  functions  which  the  as- 
sociation of  labor  presents,  it  is  inevitable  that  in 
its  international  aspects  the  association  should 
formally  advocate  universal  peace.  Workmen 
have  always  realized,  however  feebly  and  vaguely 
they  may  have  expressed  it,  that  it  is  they  who  in 
all  ages  have  borne  the  heaviest  burden  of  priva- 
tion and  suffering  imposed  on  the  world  by  the 
military  spirit. 

The  first  international  organization  founded, 
not  to  promote  a  colorless  peace,  but  to  advance 
and  develop  the  common  life  of  all  nations,  was 
founded  in  London  in  1864  by  workingmen,  and 
was  called  simply  "The  International  Association 
of  Workingmen."  They  recognized  that  a  su- 
preme interest  raised  all  workingmen  above  the 
8  113 


NEWER  IDEALS   OF  PEACE 

prejudice  of  race,  and  united  them  by  wider  and 
deeper  principles  than  those  by  which  they  were 
separated  into  nations.  They  hoped  that  as  re- 
ligion, science,  art,  had  become  international,  so 
now  at  last  labor  might  take  its  place  ' as  an  in- 
ternational interest.  A  few  years  later,  at  its 
third  congress  in  Brussels  they  recommended  that 
in  case  of  war  a  universal  strike  be  declared. 

There  is  a  growing  conviction  among  working- 
men  of  all  countries  that,  whatever  may 
accomplished  by  a  national  war,  however  moral, 
the  supposed  aim  of  such  a  war,  there  is  one 
inevitable  result— an  increased  standing  army, 
the  soldiers  of  which  are  non-producers,  and 
must  be  fed  by  the  workers. 

The  surprising  growth  of  Socialism,  at  the 
moment,  is  due  largely  to  the  fact  that  it  is  the 
only  political  party  upon  an  international  basis, 
and  also  that  it  frankly  ventures  its  future  upon 
a  better  industrial  organization.  These  two  as- 
pects have  had  much  more  to  do  with  its  hold  in 
industrial  neighborhoods  than  have  its  philosophic 
tenets  or  the  impassioned  appeal  of  its  propa- 
gandists. The  Socialists  are  making  almost  the 
sole  attempt  to  preach  a  morality  sufficiently  all- 
embracing  and  international  to  keep  pace  with 
even  that  material  internationalism  which  has 
standarized  the  threads  of  screws  and  the  size  of 
1X4 


INDUSTRIAL  LEGISLATION 

bolts,  so  that  machines  may  become  interchange- 
able from  one  country  to  another.  It  is  the  same 
sort  of  internationalism  which  Mazzini  preached 
when  distracted  Italy  was  making  her  desperate 
struggle  for  a  unified  and  national  life.  He 
issued  his  remarkable  address  to  her  workingmen 
and  solemnly  told  them  that  the  life  of  the  nation 
could  not  be  made  secure  until  her  patriots  were 
ready  to  die  for  human  issues.  He  saw,  earlier 
than  most  men,  that  the  desire  to  be  at  unity 
with  all  human  beings,  to  claim  the  sense  of  a 
universal  affection  is  a  force  not  to  be  ignored. 
He  believed  that  it  might  even  then  be  strong  \ 
enough  to  devour  the  flimsy  stuff  called  national 
honor,  glory,  and  prestige,  which  incite  to  war 
and  induce  workingmen  to  trample  over  each 
other's  fields  and  to  destroy  the  results  of  each 
other's  labor. 

Workingmen  dream  of  an  industrialism  which 
shall  be  the  handmaid  of  a  commerce  ministering 
to  an  increased  power  of  consumption  among  the 
producers  of  the  world,  binding  them  together  in 
a  genuine  internationalism.  Existing  commerce 
has  long  ago  reached  its  international  stage,  but 
it  has  been  the  result  of  business  aggression  and 
constantly  appeals  for  military  defense  and  for 
the  forcing  of  new  markets.  In  so  far  as  com- 
merce has  rested  upon  the  successful  capture  of 
IIS 


NEWER   IDEALS   OF  PEACE 

the  resources  of  the  workers,  it  has  been  a  relic  of 
the  mediaeval  baron  issuing  forth  to  seize  the  mer- 
chants' boats  as  they  passed  his  castle  on  the 
Rhine.  It  has  logically  lent  itself  to  warfare,  and 
is,  indeed,  the  modern  representative  of  conquest 
As  its  prototype  rested  upon  slavery  and  vas- 
salage, so  this  commerce  is  founded  upon  a  con- 
tempt for  the  worker  and  believes  that  he  can  live 
on  low  wages.  It  assumes  that  his  legitimate 
wants  are  the  animal  ones  comprising  merely 
food  and  shelter  and  the  cost  of  replacement. 
The  industrialism  of  which  this  commerce  is  a 
part,  exhibits  this  same  contemptuous  attitude, 
but  it  is  more  easily  extended  to  immigrants  than 
to  any  other  sort  of  workmen  because  they  seem 
further  away  from  a  common  standard  of  life. 
This  attitude  toward  the  immigrant  simply  il- 
lustrates once  more  that  it  is  around  the  deeply 
significant  idea  of  the  standard  of  life  that  our 
industrial  problems  of  to-day  centre.  The  desire 
for  a  higher  standard  of  living  in  reality  forms 
the  base  of  all  the  forward  movements  of  the 
working  class.  "The  significance  of  the  standard 
of  life  lies  not  so  much  in  the  fact  that  for  each 
of  us  it  is  different,  as  that  for  all  of  us  it  is  pro- 
gressive," ^  constantly  invading  new  realms.  To 
imagine  that  for  immigrants  it  is  merely  a  ques- 

^  The  Standard  of  Life,  by  Mrs.  Bernard  Bosenquet,  page  4. 
116 


INDUSTRIAL  LEGISLATION 


tion  of  tin  cups  and  plates  stored  in  a  bunk  versus 
a  white  cloth  and  a  cottage  table,  and  that  all  goes 
well  if  sewing-machines  and  cottage-organs  reach 
the  first  generation  of  immigrants,  and  fashion- 
able dressmakers  and  pianos  the  second,  is  of 
course  a  most  untutored  interpretation.  Until 
the  standard  of  life  is  apprehended  in  its  real 
significance  and  made  the  crux  of  the  immigrant 
situation,  as  recent  economists  are  making  the 
power  of  consumption  the  test  of  a  nation's 
prosperity,  we  shall  continue  to  ignore  the  most 
obvious  and  natural  basis  for  understanding  and 
mutual  citizenship. 

Because  workmen  have  been  forced  to  consider 
this  standard  of  living  in  regard  to  immigrants 
as  well  as  themselves,  they  have  made  genuine 
efforts  toward  amalgamation.  This  is  perhaps 
easily  explained,  for,  after  all,  the  man  in  this 
country  who  realizes  human  equality  is  not  he 
who  repeats  the  formula  of  the  eighteenth  century, 
but  he  who  has  learned  that  the  "idea  of  equality 
is  an  outgrowth  of  man's  primary  relations  with 
nature.  Birth,  growth,  nutrition,  reproduction, 
death,  are  the  great  levelers  that  remind  us  of  the 
essential  equality  of  human  life.  It  is  with  the 
guarantee  of  equal  opportunities  to  play  our  parts 
well  in  these  primary  processes  that  government 
is  chiefly  concerned"  ^  and  not  merely  with  the  re- 

*The  American  City.    Delos  F.  Wilcox,  page  200, 
117 


NEWER  IDEALS  OF  PEACE 

pression  of  the  vicious,  nor  with  guarding  the 
rights  of  property.  All  that  devotion  of  the 
trades  union  for  the  real  issues  and  trials  of  life 
could,  of  course,  easily  be  turned  into  a  passion  for 
self-government  and  for  the  development  of  the 
national  life  if  we  were  really  democratic  from 
the  modern  evolutionary  standpoint,  and  held  our 
town-meetings  upon  the  topics  of  vital  concern. 

So  long,  however,  as  the  Government  declines 
to  concern  itself  with  these  deeper  issues  involved 
in  the  standard  of  life  and  the  industrial  status 
of  thousands  of  its  citizens,  we  must  lose  it. 

If  progress  were  inaugurated  by  those  members 
of  the  community  who  possess  the  widest  knowl- 
edge and  superior  moral  insight,  then  social 
amelioration  might  be  brought  about  without  the 
bungling  and  mistakes  which  so  distress  us  all. 
But,  over  and  over  again,  salutary  changes  are 
projected  and  carried  through  by  men  of  even  less 
than  the  average  ethical  development,  because 
their  positions  in  life  have  brought  them  in  con- 
tact with  the  ills  of  existing  arrangements.  To 
quote  from  John  Morley :  "In  matters  of  social 
improvement,  the  most  common  reason  why  one 
hits  upon  a  point  of  progress  and  not  another, 
is  that  one  happens  to  be  more  directly  touched 
than  the  other  by  the  unimproved  practice.''^ 

*  Compromise,  John  Morley,  page  213. 

118 


\ 


INDUSTRIAL  LEGISLATION 


Perhaps  this  is  a  sufficient  explanation  of  the  fact 
that  untrained  workmen  are  entrusted  with  the 
difficult  task  of  industrial  amelioration  and  ad- 
justment, while  the  rest  of  the  community  often 
seems  ignorant  of  the  truth  that  institutions  which 
do  not  march  with  the  extension  of  human  needs 
and  relationships  are  dead,  and  may  easily  become 
a  deterrent  to  social  progress.  Unless  we  sub- 
ordinate class  interests  and  class  feeling  to  a 
broader  conception  of  social  progress,  unless  we 
take  pains  to  come  in  contact  with  the  surging 
and  diverse  peoples  who  make  up  the  nation,  we 
cannot  hope  to  attain  a  sane  social  development. 
We  need  rigid  enforcement  of  the  existing  laws, 
while  at  the  same  time,  we  frankly  admit  the 
inadequacy  of  these  laws,  and  work  without 
stint  for  progressive  regulations  better  fitted  to 
the  newer  issues  among  which  our  lot  is  cast; 
for,  unless  the  growing  conscience  is  successfully 
embodied  in  legal  enactment,  men  lose  the  habit 
of  turning  to  the  law  for  guidance  and  redress. 

I  recall,  in  illustration  of  this,  an  instance  which 
took  place  fifteen  years  ago.  I  had  newly  come 
to  Chicago,  fresh  from  the  country,  and  had  little 
idea  of  the  social  and  industrial  conditions  in 
which  I  found  myself  on  Halsted  Street,  when  a 
dozen  girls  came  from  a  neighboring  factory 
with  a  grievance  in  regard  to  their  wages.  The 
119 


NEWER  IDEALS   OF  PEACE 

affair  could  hardly  have  been  called  a  labor  diffi- 
culty.   The  girls  had  never  heard  of  a  trades 
union,  and  were  totally  unaccustomed  to  acting 
together.    It  was  more  in  the  nature  of  a  ''scrap'' 
between  themselves  and  their  foreman.    In  the 
effort  toward  adjustment,  there  remains  vividly 
in  my  memory  a  conversation  I  had  with  a  lead- 
ing judge  who  arbitrated  the  difficulty.  He 
expressed  his  belief  in  the  capacity  of  the  com- 
mon law  to  meet  all  legitimate  labor  difficulties 
as  they  arise.    He  trusted  its  remarkable  adapt- 
ability to  changing  conditions  under  the  decisions 
of  wise  and  progressive  judges.    He  contended, 
however,  that,  in  order  to  adjust  it  to  our  indus- 
trial affairs,  it  must  be  interpreted,  not  so  much  in 
relation  to  precedents  established  under  a  judicial 
order  which  belongs  to  the  past,  but  in  reference 
to  that  newer  sense  of  justice  which  this  genera- 
tion is  seeking  to  embody  in  industrial  relations. 
He  foresaw  something  of  the  stress  and  storm  of 
the  industrial  conflicts  which  have  occurred  in  Chi- 
cago since  then,  and  he  expressed  the  hope  that  the 
Bench  of  Cook  County  might  seize  the  opportunity, 
in  this  new  and  difficult  situation,  of  dealing  with 
labor  difficulties  in  a  judicial  spirit. 

What  a  difference  it  would  have  made  in  the 
history  of  Chicago  during  the  last  fifteen  years  if 
more  men  had  been  possessed  of  this  temper  and 

120 


INDUSTRIAL  LEGISLATION 


wisdom,  and  had  refused  to  countenance  the  use 
of  force.  If  more  men  had  been  able  to  see  the 
situation  through  a  fresher  medium ;  to  apprehend 
that  the  old  legal  enactments  were  too  individual- 
istic and  narrow ;  that  a  difference  in  degree  may 
make  a  difference  in  kind;  if  they  had  realized 
that  they  were  the  first  generation  of  American 
jurists  who  had  to  deal  with  a  situation  made 
novel  by  the  fact  that  it  was  brought  about  by  the 
coming  together  of  two  millions  of  people  largely 
on  an  industrial  basis ! 

Our  constitutions  were  constructed  by  the  ad- 
vanced men  of  the  eighteenth  century,  who  had 
studied  the  works  of  the  most  radical  thinkers  of 
that  century.  Radicalism  then  meant  a  more 
democratic  political  organization,  and  in  its  de- 
fence, they  fearlessly  quoted  the  Greek  city  and 
the  Roman  Forum.  But  we  have  come  to  admit 
that  our  present  difficulties  are  connected  with  our 
industrial  organization  and  with  the  lack  of  con- 
nection between  that  organization  and  our  inher- 
ited democratic  form  of  government.  If  self- 
government  were  to  be  inaugurated  by  the  ad- 
vanced men  of  the  present  moment,  they  would 
make  a  most  careful  research  into  those  early 
organizations  of  village  communities,  folk-motes, 
and  mirs,  those  primary  cells  of  both  industrial 
and  political  organizations,   where  the  people 

121 


NEWER  IDEALS  OF  PEACE 

knew  no  difference  between  the  two,  but,  quite 
simply,  met  to  consider  in  common  discussion 
all  that  concerned  their  common  life.  They 
would  investigate  the  crafts,  guilds,  and  artels, 
which  combine  government  with  daily  occupa- 
tions, as  did  the  self-governing  university  and 
free  town.    They  would  seek  for  the  connec- 
tion between  the  liberty-loving  mediaeval  city 
and  its  free  creative  architecture,  that  art  which 
combines  the  greatest  variety  of  artists  and 
artisans.    They  would  not  altogether  ignore  the 
"compulsion  of  origins"  and  the  fact  that  our 
present  civilization  is  most  emphatically  an  indus- 
trial one.    In  Germany,  when  the  Social  Demo- 
cratic party  first  vigorously  asserted  the  economic 
basis  of  society  and  laid  the  emphasis  upon  its 
industrial  aspect,  the  Government  itself,  in  a 
series  of  legislative  measures,  designated  "the 
Socialism  of  Bismarck,"  found  itself  dealing 
directly  with  industry,  through  a  sheer  effort  to 
give  itself  a  touch  of  reality.    The  Government 
of  Russia,  in  the  first  year  of  the  Japanese  War, 
made  an  effort  to  relieve  the  needs  of  the  people. 
The  bureaucracy  itself  organized  the  workmen 
into  a  species  of  trades  unions  through  which  the 
Russian  Government  promised  to  protect  the 
proletarian  from  the  aggressions  of  capital.  The 
entire  incident  was  suggestive  of  the  protection 

122 


INDUSTRIAL  LEGISLATION 


afforded  by  the  central  State  to  the  slowly 
emanicipated  serfs  of  central  Europe  when  the 
barons,  reluctant  to  give  up  their  rights  and 
privileges,  so  unjustly  oppressed  them. 

Shall  a  democracy  be  slower  than  these  old 
Powers  to  protect  its  humblest  citizen,  and  shall 
it  see  them  slowly  deteriorating  because,  accord- 
ing to  democratic  theory,  they  do  not  need 
protection? 


CHAPTER  V 


GROUP  MORALITY  IN  THE  LABOR  MOVEMENT 

This  generation  is  constantly  confronted  by 
radical  industrial  changes,  from  which  the  com- 
munity as  a  whole  profits,  but  which  must  in- 
evitably bring  difficulty  of  adjustment  and  dis- 
aster to  men  of  certain  trades.  In  all  fairness, 
these  difficulties  should  be  distributed  and  should 
not  be  allowed  to  fall  completely  upon  the  group 
of  working-people  whose  labor  is  displaced  as  a 
result  of  the  changes  and  who  are  obliged  to  learn 
anew  their  method  of  work  and  mode  of  life. 

If  the  great  industrial  changes  could  be  con- 
sidered as  belonging  to  the  community  as  a  whole 
and  could  be  reasonably  dealt  with,  the  situation 
would  then  be  difficult  enough,  but  it  is  enor- 
mously complicated  by  the  fact  that  society  has 
become  divided  into  camps  in  relation  to  the  in- 
dustrial system  and  that  many  times  the  factions 
break  out  into  active  hostility.  These  two  camps 
inevitably  develop  group  morality — ^the  employ- 
ers tending  toward  the  legal  and  contractual  devel- 
opment of  morality,  the  workingmen  toward  the 
124 


GROUP  MORALITY 


sympathetic  and  human.  Among  our  contempo- 
raries, these  two  are  typified  by  the  employers  as^ 
sociations  and  the  trades  unions. 

It  is  always  difficult  to  judge  a  contempora- 
neous movement  with  any  degree  of  fairness,  and 
it  is  perennially  perplexing  to  distinguish  what  is 
merely  adventitious  and  temporary  from  that 
which  represents  essential  and  permanent  ten- 
dencies. This  discrimination  is  made  much 
more  difficult  when  a  movement  exhibits  various 
stages  of  development  contemporaneously,  when 
a  dozen  historic  phases  are  going  on  at  the  same 
time.  Yet  every  historic  movement  towards 
democracy,  which  constantly  gathers  to  itself 
large  bodies  of  raw  recruits  while  the  older 
groups  are  moving  on,  presents  this  peculiar  dif- 
ficulty. In  the  case  of  trades  unions,  certain 
groups  are  marked  by  lawlessness  and  disorder, 
others  by  most  decorous  business  methods,  and 
still  others  are  fairly  decadent  in  their  desire  for 
monopolistic  control.  It  is  a  long  cry  from  the 
Chartists  of  1839,  burning  hayricks,  to  John 
Burns  of  1902,  pleading  in  the  House  of  Com- 
mons with  well-reasoned  eloquence  for  an  ex- 
tension of  the  workingmen's  franchise.  Never- 
theless they  are  both  manifestations  of  the  same 
movement  towards  universal  suffrage  and  show 
no  greater  difference  than  that  between  the  Chica- 
125 


NEWER  IDEALS  OF  PEACE 


go  teamsters,  who  were  blocking  commerce  and  al- 
most barricading  the  streets  in  1902  when  at  the 
same  moment  John  Mitchell  made  his  well-con- ^ 
sidered  statement  that  he  would  rather  lose  the 
coal  strike,  with  all  that  that  loss  implied,  than 
gain  it  at  the  cost  of  violence.  Students  of  in- 
dustrial history  will  point  out  the  sequence  and 
development  of  the  political  movement  from  the 
Chartist  to  the  Independent  Labor  party.  They 
wall  tell  us  that  the  same  desire  burned  in  the 
hearts  of  the  ignorant  farmers  which  fired  the  dis- 
tinguished parliamentarian,  but  they  give  no  help 
to  our  bewildered  minds  when  we  would  fain  dis- 
cover some  order  and  sequence  between  the  widely 
separated  events  of  the  contemporaneous  labor 
movement. 

We  must  first  get  down  to  the  question,  In 
what  does  "the  inevitably  destined  rise  of  the 
men  of  labor"  consist?  What  are  we  trying  to 
solve  in  this  "most  hazardous  problem  of  the 
age"?  Is  progress  in  the  labor  movement  to 
come,  as  we  are  told  progress  comes  in  the  non- 
moral  world,  by  the  blind,  brute  struggle  of  in- 
dividual interests;  or  is  it  to  come,  as  its  earlier 
leaders  believed,  through  the  operation  of  the 
human  will?  Is  it  a  question  of  morals  which 
must  depend  upon  educators  and  apostles;  or  is 
it  merely  a  conflict  of  opposing  rights  which  may 
126 


GROUP  MORALITY 


legitimately  use  coercion?  The  question,  from 
the  very  nature  of  the  case,  is  confusing;  for,  of 
necessity,  the  labor  movement  has  perfectly 
legitimate  economic  and  business  aspects,  which 
loom  large  and  easily  overshadow  the  ethical. 
We  would  all  agree  that  only  when  men  have 
education,  a  margin  of  leisure,  and  a  decent 
home  can  they  find  room  to  develop  the  moral 
life.  Before  that,  there  are  too  many  chances  that 
it  will  be  crushed  out  by  ignorance,  by  grinding 
weariness,  and  by  indecency.  But  the  danger 
lies  in  the  conviction  that  these  advantages  are 
to  be  secured  by  any  means,  moral  or  non-moral, 
and  in  holding  them  paramount  to  the  inner  life 
which  they  are  supposed  to  nourish.  The  labor 
movement  is  confronted  by  that  inevitable  prob- 
lem which  confronts  every  movement  and  every 
individual.  How  far  shall  the  compromise  be 
made  between  the  inner  concept  and  the  outer 
act?  How  may  we  concede  what  it  is  necessary 
to  concede,  without  conceding  all? 

We  constantly  forget  that,  in  the  last  analysis, 
the  spiritual  growth  of  one  social  group  is  con- 
ditioned by  the  reaction  of  other  social  groups 
upon  it.  We  ignore  the  fact  that  the  worship  of 
success,  so  long  dominant  in  America,  has  taught 
the  majority  of  our  citizens  to  count  only  accom- 
plishment and  to  make  little  inquiry  concerning 
127 


NEWER  IDEALS   OF  PEACE 

methods.  Success  has  become  the  sole  standard 
in  regard  to  business  enterprises  and  political 
parties,  but  it  is  evident  that  the  public  intends  to 
call  a  halt  before  it  is  willing  to  apply  the  same 
standard  to  labor  organizations. 

It  is  clear  that  the  present  moment  is  one  of 
unusual  crisis— that  many  of  the  trades  unions 
of  America  have  reached  a  transitional  period, 
when  they  can  no  longer  be  mere  propagandists, 
but  are  called  upon  to  deal  with  concrete  and  dif- 
ficult situations.  When  they  were  small  and 
persecuted,  they  held  to  the  faith  and  its  impli- 
cation of  idealism.  As  they  become  larger  and 
more  powerful,  they  make  terms  with  the  life 
about  them,  and  compromise  as  best  they  may 
with  actual  conditions. 

The  older  unions,  which  have  reached  the 
second  stage  that  may  be  described  as  that  of 
business  dealing,  are  constantly  hampered  and 
harassed  by  the  actions  of  the  younger  unions 
which  are  still  in  the  enthusiastic  stage.  This 
embarrassment  is  especially  notable  just  now, 
for,  during  this  last  period  of  prosperity,  trades 
unions  have  increased  enormously  in  numbers; 
the  State  Federation  of  Minnesota,  for  instance, 
reported  an  increase  of  six  hundred  per  cent,  in 
one  year.  Nearly  all  the  well-established  unions 
128 


GROUP  MORALITY 


have  been  flooded  by  new  members  who  are  not 
yet  assimilated  and  disciplined. 

During  this  period  of  extraordinary  growth, 
the  labor  movement  has  naturally  attracted  to 
itself  hundreds  of  organizations  which  are  yet  in 
their  infancy  and  exhibit  all  the  weakness  of 
"group  morality/'  This  doubtless  tends  to  a 
conception  of  moral  life  which  is  as  primitive  as 
that  which  controlled  the  beginnings  of  patriot- 
ism, when  the  members  of  the  newly  conscious 
nation  considered  all  those  who  were  outside  as 
possible  oppressors  and  enemies,  and  were  loyal 
only  towards  those  whom  their  imagination  in- 
cluded as  belonging  to  the  national  life.  They 
gave  much,  and  demanded  much,  in  the  name  of 
blood  brothers,  but  were  merciless  to  the  rest  of 
the  world.  In  addition  to  its  belligerent  youth 
and  its  primitive  morality,  the  newer  union  is 
prone  to  declare  a  strike,  simply  because  the  mem- 
bers have  long  suf¥ered  what  they  consider  to  be 
grievances,  and  the  accumulated  sense  of  unre- 
dressed wrong  makes  them  eager  for  a  chance  to 
"fight  for  their  rights."  At  the  same  time,  the 
employer  always  attempts  his  most  vigorous  at- 
tack upon  a  new  union,  both  because  he  does  not 
wish  organized  labor  to  obtain  a  foothold  in  his 
factory,  and  because  his  chances  for  success  are 
greater  before  his  employees  are  well  disciplined 
9  139 


NEWER  IDEALS  OF  PEACE 


in  unionism.  Nevertheless  in  actual  conflict  a 
young  union  will  often  make  a  more  reckless  fight 
than  an  older  one,  like  the  rough  rider  in  contrast 
with  the  disciplined  soldier.  The  members  of  a 
newly  organized  group  naturally  respond  first  to 
a  sense  of  loyalty  to  each  other  as  against  their 
employers,  and  then  to  the  wider  consciousness  of 
organized  labor  as  against  capital  This  stage  of 
trades  unionism  is  full  of  war  phraseology,  with 
its  "pickets"  and  ''battle-grounds/'  and  is  respon- 
sible for  the  most  serious  mistakes  of  the  move- 
ment. 

The  sense  of  group  loyalty  holds  trades  union- 
ists longer  than  is  normal  to  other  groups,  doubt- 
less because  of  the  constant  accessions  of  those  who 
are  newly  conscious  of  its  claims. 

Those  Chicago  strikes,  which,  during  the  last 
few  years,  have  been  most  notably  characterized 
by  disorder  and  the  necessity  for  police  interfer- 
ence, have  almost  universally  been  inaugurated 
by  the  newly  organized  unions.  They  have 
called  to  their  aid  the  older  organizations,  and 
the  latter  have  entered  into  the  struggle  many 
times  under  protest  and  most  obviously  against 
their  best  interests. 

The  Chicago  Federation  of  Labor  has  often 
given   its   official   indorsement   to  hot-headed 
strikes  on  the  part  of  "baby  unions"  because  the 
130 


GROUP  MORALITY 


delegates  from  the  newly  organized  or  freshly 
recruited  unions  had  the  larger  vote,  and  the 
appeal  to  loyalty  and  to  fraternity  carried  the 
meeting  against  the  judgment  of  the  delegates 
from  the  older  unions. 

The  members  of  newly  organized  unions  more 
readily  respond  to  the  appeal  to  strike,  in  that  it 
stirs  memory  of  their  ''organization  night,"  when 
they  were  admitted  after  solemn  ceremonies  into 
the  American  Federation  of  Labor.  At  the  same 
time,  the  organizers  themselves  often  hold  out 
too  large  promises,  on  the  sordid  side,  of  what 
organization  will  be  able  to  accomplish.  They 
tell  the  newly  initiated  what  other  unions  have 
done,  without  telling  at  the  same  time  how  long 
they  have  been  organized  and  how  steadily  they 
have  paid  dues.  Several  years  ago,  when  there 
seemed  to  be  a  veritable  ''strike  fever"  in  Chicago 
among  the  younger  trades  unions,  it  was  suggested 
in  the  Federation  of  Labor  that  no  union  be  author- 
ized to  declare  a  strike  until  it  had  been  organiz:ed 
for  at  least  two  years.  The  regulation  was 
backed  by  some  of  the  strongest  and  wisest 
trades  unionists,  but  it  failed  to  pass  because  the 
organizers  were  convinced  that  it  would  cripple 
them  in  forming  new  unions.  They  would  be 
obliged  to  point  to  many  months  of  patient  pay- 
ment of  dues  and  humdrum  meetings  before  any 
131 


NEWER   IDEALS   OF  PEACE 


real  gain  could  be  secured.  The  organizers,  in 
fact,  are  in  the  position  of  a  recruiting  officer  who 
is  obliged  to  tell  his  raw  material  of  all  the  glo- 
ries of  war,  but  at  the  same  time  bid  them  remem- 
ber that  warfare  is  always  inexpedient.  He  must 
advise  them  to  take  a  long  and  tedious  training 
in  the  arts  of  diplomacy  and  in  the  most  advanced 
methods  of  averting  war  before  any  action  can 
possibly  be  considered. 

In  point  of  fact  the  organizers  do  not  do  this, 
and  many  men  join  unions  expecting  that  a 
strike  will  be  speedily  declared  which  will  settle 
all  the  difficulties  of  modern  industrialism.  It 
is,  therefore,  not  so  remarkable  that  strikes  should 
occur  often  and  should  exhibit  warlike  features. 
What  is  remarkable  is  the  attitude  of  the  public 
which  has  certainly  eliminated  the  tactics  of  war 
in  other  civil  relations. 

A  tacit  admission  that  a  strike  is  war  and  that 
all  the  methods  of  warfare  are  permissible  was 
made  in  Chicago  during  the  teamsters'  strike  of 
1905,  when  there  was  little  protest  against  the 
war  method  of  conducting  a  struggle  between 
two  private  organizations,  one  of  employer  and 
one  of  employed.  Why  should  the  principles  of 
legal  adjustment  have  been  thus  complacently 
flung  to  the  winds  by  the  two  millions  of  citizens 
who  had  no  direct  interest  in  this  struggle,  but 
132 


GROUP  MORALITY 


whose  pursuits  in  business  were  interfered  with, 
whose  safety  on  the  streets  was  imperiled,  and 
whose  moral  sensibilities  were  outraged? 

How  did  the  public  become  hypnotized  into  a 
passive  endurance  of  a  street  warfare  in  which 
two  associations  were  engaged,  like  feudal  chiefs 
with  their  recalcitrant  retainers?  In  those  similar 
cases,  when  blood  grew  too  hot  on  both  sides,  the 
mediaeval  emperor  intervened  and  compelled 
peace.  General  public  opinion  is  our  hard-won 
substitute  for  the  emperor's  personal  will.  Public 
opinion,  however,  did  not  assert  itself  and  inter- 
fere— on  the  contrary,  the  entire  town  acquiesced 
in  the  statement  of  the  contestants  that  this  m.ethod 
of  warfare  was  the  only  one  possible,  and  there- 
upon yielded  to  a  tendency  to  overvalue  physical 
force  and  to  ignore  the  subtler  and  less  obvious 
conditions  on  which  the  public  welfare  rests.  At 
that  time  all  methods  of  arbitration  and  legal  re- 
dress were  completely  set  aside. 

There  is  no  doubt  but  that  ideas  and  words 
which  at  one  time  fill  a  community  with  enthu- 
siasm may,  after  a  few  years,  cease  to  be  a  mov- 
ing force,  apparently  from  no  other  reason  than 
that  they  are  spent  and  no  longer  fit  into  the 
temper  of  the  hour.  Such  a  fate  has  evidently 
befallen  the  word  "arbitration,"  at  least  in  Chi- 
cago, as  it  is  applied  to  industrial  struggles. 
133 


NEWER   IDEALS   OF  PEACE 


Almost  immediately  following  the  labor  disturb- 
ances of  1894  in  Chicago,  the  agitation  was  be- 
gun for  a  State  Board  of  Arbitration,  resulting 
in  legislation  and  the  appointment  of  the  Illinois 
Board.  At  that  time  the  public  believed  that  arbi- 
tration would  go  far  towards  securing  industrial 
peace,  or  at  least  that  it  would  provide  the  device 
through  which  labor  troubles  could  be  speedily  ad- 
justed, and  during  that  period  there  was  much 
talk  concerning  compulsory  arbitration  with  refer- 
ence to  the  successful  attempts  in  New  Zealand. 

During  the  industrial  struggles  of  later  years, 
however,  not  only  are  the  services  of  the  State 
Board  rejected,  but  voluntary  bodies  constantly 
find  their  efforts  less  satisfactory.  Employers 
contend  that  arbitration  implies  the  yielding  of 
points  on  both  sides.  Since,  however,  most 
boards  of  arbitration  provide  that  grievances 
xnust  be  submitted  to  them  before  the  strike 
occurs,  and  the  men  are  thus  kept  at  work  while 
the  grievances  are  being  considered,  the  men 
therefore  have  virtually  nothing  to  lose  by  declar- 
ing a  strike.  They  are  subjected  to  a  tempta- 
tion to  constantly  formulate  new  demands,  be- 
cause, without  losing  time  or  pay,  they  are  almost 
certain  to  secure  some  concession,  however  small, 
in  their  favor.  The  employers  in  the  teamsters* 
strike  thus  explained  their  position  when  they  de- 
134 


GROUP  MORALITY 


clared  that  there  was  nothing  which  could  be  sub- 
mitted to  arbitration.  These  employers  also  con- 
tended that  the  ordinary  court  has  no  precedent 
for  dealing  with  questions  of  hours  and  wages, 
of  shop  rules,  and  many  other  causes  of  trade- 
union  disputes,  because  all  these  matters  are  new 
as  questions  of  law  and  can  be  satisfactorily 
adjusted  only  through  industrial  courts  in  which 
tradition  and  precedent  bearing  upon  modern 
industrial  conditions  have  been  accumulated.  The 
rise  and  fall  of  wages  affect  not  one  firm  only,  but 
a  national  industry,  and  even  the  currents  of  in- 
ternational trade,  so  that  it  is  impossible  to  treat 
of  them  as  matters  in  equity.  With  this  ex- 
planation, the  Chicago  public  rested  content  dur- 
ing the  long  weeks  of  the  teamsters'  strike,  for 
no  one  pointed  out  that  these  arguments  did  not 
apply  to  this  particular  situation,  so  accustomed 
have  we  grown  in  Chicago  to  warfare  as  a  method 
of  settling  labor  disputes.  The  charges  of  the 
Employers'  Association  against  the  teamsters  did 
not  involve  any  points  demanding  adjustment 
through  industrial  courts.  The  charges  the  Em- 
ployers' Association  made  were  those  of  broken 
contracts,  of  blackmail,  and  of  conspiracy,  all  of 
them  points  which  are  constantly  adjudicated  in 
Cook  County  courts. 

It  was  constantly  asserted  that  officers  of  the 
135 


NEWER   IDEALS   OF  PEACE 


Teamsters'  Union  demanded  money  from  employ- 
ers in  the  height  of  the  busy  season  in  order  to 
avert  threatened  strikes;  that  there  was  a  dis- 
graceful alliance  between  certain  members  of  the 
Team  Owners'  Association  and  officers  of  the 
Teamsters'  Union. 

It  would,  of  course,  have  been  impossible  to 
prove  blackmail  and  the  charges  of  "graft,"  un^ 
less  the  employers  themselves  or  their  representa- 
tives had  borne  testimony,  which  would  inevitably 
have  implicated  themselves.  During  the  first 
weeks  of  the  strike,  these  charges  were  freely 
made,  definite  sums  were  named,  and  dates  were 
given.  There  was  also  an  offer  on  the  part  of 
various  managers  to  make  affidavits,  but  later 
they  shrank  from  the  publicity,  and  refused  to 
give  them,  preferring  apparently  to  throw  the 
whole  town  into  disorder  rather  than  to  "stand 
up"  to  the  consequences  of  their  own  acts  and  to 
acknowledge  the  bribery  to  which  they  claim  they 
were  forced  to  resort.  They  demonstrated  once 
more  that  a  show  of  manliness  and  an  appeal  to 
arms  may  many  times  hide  cowardice. 

To  throw  affairs  into  a  state  of  warfare  is  to 
put  them  where  the  moral  aspect  will  not  be 
scrutinized  and  where  the  mere  interest  of  the 
game  and  a  desire  to  watch  it  will  be  paramount. 

The  vicious  combination  represented  by  cer- 
136 


GROUP  MORALITY 

tain  men  in  the  Team  Owners'  Association  and  in 
the  Teamsters'  Union,  "the  labor  and  capital 
hunting  together''  kind,  is  a  public  menace  which 
can  be  abolished  only  by  a  combined  effort  on  the 
part  of  the  best  employers  and  the  best  labor  men. 
The  ''better  element"  certainly  were  in  a  majority, 
for  the  most  dangerous  members  of  this  sinister 
combination  were  at  last  reduced  to  fifteen  or 
twenty  men.  These  very  men,  however,  after  a 
prolonged  strike,  became  either  victors  or  martyrs, 
and  in  either  case  were  firmly  established  in  power 
and  influence  for  the  succeeding  two  years.  Why 
should  an  entire  city  of  two  million  people  have 
been  put  to  such  an  amazing  amount  of  incon- 
venience and  financial  loss,  with  their  characters 
brutalized  as  well,  in  order  to  accomplish  this? 
The  traditional  burning  of  the  house  in  order  to 
roast  the  pig  is  quite  outdone  by  this  overturning 
of  a  city  in  order  to  catch  a  ''score  of  rascals,'' 
for  in  the  end  the  rascals  are  not  caught,  and  it 
is  as  if  the  house  were  burned  and  the  pig  had  es- 
caped. Was  it  not  the  result  of  acting  under 
military  fervor?  Over  and  over  again  it  has 
been  found  that  organizations  based  upon  a 
mutual  sense  of  grievance  or  of  outrage  have  al- 
ways been  militant,  for  while  men  cannot  be 
formed  permanently  into  associations  whose  chief 
bond  is  a  sense  of  exasperation  and  wrong  deal- 
137 


NEWER   IDEALS   OF  PEACE 

ing,  during  the  time  they  are  thus  held  together 
they  are  committed  to  aggressive  action. 

Moral  rights  and  duties  formed  upon  the  rela- 
tions of  man  to  man  are  applicable  to  all  situa- 
tions, and  to  deny  this  applicability  to  a  difficult 
case,  is  to  beg  the  entire  question.  The  conse- 
quences do  not  stop  there,  for  we  all  know  that  to 
deny  the  validity  of  the  moral  principle  in  one 
relation  is  to  sap  its  strength  in  all  relations. 

Employers  often  resent  being  obliged  to  have 
business  relations  with  workingmen,  although 
they  no  longer  say  that  they  will  refuse  to  deal 
with  them,  as  a  woman  still  permits  herself  to  say 
that  she  ''will  not  argue  with  a  servant."  They 
nevertheless  contend  that  the  men  are  unreason- 
able, and  that  because  it  is  impossible  to  establish 
contractual  relations  with  them,  they  must  be 
coerced.  This  contention  goes  far  toward  legit- 
imatizing terrorism.  It  therefore  seems  to  them 
defensible  to  refuse  to  go  into  the  courts  and  to  in- 
sist upon  war  because  they  do  it  from  a  conscious- 
ness of  rectitude,  although  this  insensibly  slips  in- 
to a  consciousness  of  power,  as  self-righteousness 
is  so  prone  to  do.  But  these  are  all  the  traits  of 
militant  youth,  which  in  the  teamsters'  strike  was 
indeed  borne  out  by  the  facts  in  the  case. 

The  Employers'  Association  of  Chicago  was 
largely  composed  of  merchants  whose  experience 
138 


GROUP  MORALITY 


with  trades  unionism  was  almost  limited  to  the 
Teamsters'  Union  which  has  been  in  existence 
for  only  five  years  and,  from  the  first,  has  been 
truculent  and  difficult.  Had  the  employers  in- 
volved been  manufacturers  instead  of  merchants, 
they  would  have  had  years  of  experience  with 
unions  of  skilled  men,  and  they  would  have  more 
nearly  learned  to  adjust  their  personal  and  busi- 
ness relations  to  trades  unionism.  When  an  en- 
tire class  in  a  community  confess  that  without  an 
appeal  to  arms  they  cannot  deal  with  trades 
unions,  who,  after  all,  represent  a  national  and 
international  movement  a  hundred  years  old, 
they  practically  admit  that  they  cannot  manage 
their  business  under  the  existing  conditions  of 
modern  life.  To  a  very  great  extent  it  is  a 
confession  of  weakness,  to  a  very  great  extent 
a  confession  of  frailty  of  temper.  To  make  the 
adjustment  to  the  peculiar  problems  of  one's 
own  surroundings  is  the  crux  of  life's  difficulties. 
*'New  organizations"  and  ^'new  experiments  in 
living"  would  not  arise  if  there  were  not  a  cer- 
tain inadequateness  in  existing  organizations  and 
ways  of  living.  The  new  organizations  and  ex- 
periments may  not  point  to  the  right  mode  of 
meeting  the  situation,  but  they  do  point  to  the 
existence  of  inadequateness  and  the  need  of  re- 
adjustment. Changes  in  business  methods  have 
139 


NEWER   IDEALS   OF  PEACE 


been  multiform  during  the  past  fifteen  years,  and 
Chicago  business  men  who  have  made  those  other 
adjustments  would  certainly  be  able  to  deal  with 
labor  in  its  present  organized  form  if  they  were 
not  inhibited  by  certain  concepts  of  their  "group 
morality/' 

In  the  meantime  the  public,  which  has  been 
powerless  to  interfere,  can  only  point  to  the  con- 
sequences of  grave  social  import  which  are  sure 
to  result  from  a  prolonged  period  of  disturb- 
ance. 

First,  there  is  the  sharp  division  of  the  com^ 
munity  into  classes,  with  its  inevitable  hostility 
and  misunderstanding.  Capital  lines  up  on  one 
side,  and  labor  on  the  other,  until  the  "fair-mind- 
ed public''  disappears  and  Chicago  loses  her  demo- 
cratic spirit  which  has  always  been  her  most 
precious  possession.  In  its  place  is  substituted 
loyalty  to  the  side  to  which  each  man  belongs, 
irrespective  of  the  merits  of  the  case— the  "my 
country  right  or  wrong"  sentiment  which  we  call 
patriotism  only  in  war  times,  the  blind  adherence 
by  which  a  man  is  attached  against  his  will,  as  it 
were,  to  the  blunders  of  "his  own  kind." 

During  the  first  week  of  the  strike,  I  talked 
with  labor  men  who  w^ere  willing  to  admit  that 
there  were  grounds  for  indictment  against  at 
least  two  of  the  officers  in  the  teamsters'  locals. 
140 


GROUP  MORALITY 


During  the  third  week  of  the  strike  all  that  was 
swept  aside,  and  one  heard  only  that  the  situation 
must  be  taken  quite  by  itself,  with  no  references 
to  the  first  causes,  that  it  was  a  strike  of  organ- 
ized capital  against  organized  labor,  and  that  we 
could  have  no  peace  in  Chicago  until  it  was 
"fought  to  a  finish/' 

Second,  there  is  an  enormous  increase  in  the 
feeling  of  race  animosity,  beginning  with  the  im- 
ported negro  strike-breakers,  and  easily  extending 
to  "Dagoes''  and  all  other  distinct  nationalities. 
The  principle  of  racial  and  class  equality  is  at 
the  basis  of  American  political  life,  and  to 
wantonly  destroy  it  is  one  of  the  gravest  outrages 
against  the  RepubHc. 

Chicago  is  preeminently  a  city  of  mixed 
nationalities.  It  is  our  problem  to  learn  to  live 
together  in  forbearance  and  understanding  and  to 
fuse  all  the  nations  of  men  into  the  newest  and, 
perhaps,  the  highest  type  of  citizenship.  To  ac- 
cept this  responsibility  may  constitute  our  finest 
contribution  to  the  problems  of  American  life, 
but  we  may  also  wantonly  and  easily  throw  away 
such  an  opportunity  by  the  stirring  up  of  race 
and  national  animosity  which  is  so  easily  aroused 
and  so  reluctantly  subsides. 

Third,  there  is  the  spirit  of  materialism  which 
controls  the  city  and  confirms  the  belief  that,  after 
141 


NEWER  IDEALS   OF  PEACE 

all,  brute  force,  a  trial  of  physical  strength,  is  all 
that  counts  and  the  only  thing  worthy  of  admira* 
tion.  Any  check  on  the  moral  consciousness  is 
paralyzed  when  the  belief  is  once  established  that 
success  is  its  own  justification.  When  the  stream 
of  this  belief  joins  the  current  of  class  interest, 
the  spirit  of  the  prize  fighters'  ring  which  cheers 
the  best  round  and  worships  the  winner,  becomes 
paramount.  It  is  exactly  that  which  appeals  to 
the  so-called  ''hoodlum,"  and  his  sudden  appear- 
ance upon  the  street  at  such  times  and  in  such 
surprising  numbers  demonstrates  that  he  realizes 
that  he  has  come  to  his  own.  At  the  moment 
we  all  forget  that  the  determination  to  sacrifice 
all  higher  considerations  to  business  efficiency, 
to  make  the  machine  move  smoothly  at  any  cost, 
''to  stick  at  nothing,''  may  easily  make  a  breach 
in  the  ethical  constitution  of  society  which  can  be 
made  good  only  by  years  of  painful  reparation. 

Fourth,  there  is  the  effect  upon  the  children  and 
the  youth  of  the  entire  city,  for  the  furrow  of  class 
prejudice,  which  is  so  easily  run  through  a  plas- 
tic mind,  often  leaves  a  life-long  mark.  Each 
morning  during  the  long  weeks  of  the  strike, 
thousands  of  children  at  the  more  comfortable 
breakfast  tables  learned  to  regard  labor  unions  as 
the  inciters  of  riot  and  the  instruments  of  evil, 
thousands  of  children  at  the  less  comfortable 
142 


GROUP  MORALITY 


breakfast  tables  shared  the  impotent  rage  of  their 
parents  that  ''law  is  always  on  the  side  of  capital," 
and  both  sets  of  children  added  to  the  horrors  of 
Manchuria  and  Warsaw,  which  were  then  taking 
place,  the  pleasurable  excitement  that  war  had  be- 
come domesticated  upon  their  own  streets.  We 
may  well  believe  that  these  impressions  and  emo- 
tions will  be  kept  by  these  children  as  part  of  their 
equipment  in  life  and  that  their  moral  conceptions 
will  permanently  tend  toward  group  moralities 
and  will  be  cast  into  a  coarser  mold. 

In  illustration  of  this  point  I  may,  perhaps, 
cite  my  experience  during  the  Spanish  War. 

For  ten  years  I  had  lived  in  a  neighborhood 
which  is  by  no  means  criminal,  and  yet  during 
October  and  November  of  1898  we  were  startled 
by  seven  murders  within  a  radius  of  ten  blocks. 
A  little  investigation  of  details  and  motives,  the 
accident  of  a  personal  acquaintance  with  two  of 
the  criminals,  made  it  not  in  the  least  difficult  to 
trace  the  murders  back  to  the  influence  of  the 
war.  Simple  people  who  read  of  carnage  and 
bloodshed  easily  receive  suggestions.  Habits 
of  self-control  which  have  been  but  slowly  and 
imperfectly  acquired  quickly  break  down  when 
such  a  stress  is  put  upon  them. 

Psychologists  intimate  that  action  is  deter- 
mined by  the  selection  of  the  subject  upon  which 
143 


NEWER   IDEALS   OF  PEACE 

the  attention  is  habitually  fixed.  The  news- 
papers, the  theatrical  posters,  the  street  conversa- 
tions for  weeks,  had  to  do  with  war  and  blood- 
shed. Day  after  day,  the  little  children  on  the 
street  played  at  war  and  at  killing  Spaniards.  The 
humane  instinct,  which  keeps  in  abeyance  the  tend- 
ency to  cruelty,  as  well  as  the  growing  belief  that 
the  life  of  each  human  being,  however  hopeless  or 
degraded,  is  still  sacred,  gives  way,  and  the  more 
primitive  instinct  asserts  itself. 

There  is  much  the  same  social  result  during  a 
strike,  in  addition  to  the  fact  that  the  effect  of  the 
prolonged  warfare  upon  the  labor  movement  it- 
self is  most  disastrous.    The  unions  at  such 
times  easily  raise  into  power  the  unscrupulous 
"leader,"  so-called.    In  times  of  tumult,  the  ag- 
gressive man,  the  one  who  is  of  bellicose  temper, 
and  is  reckless  in  his  statements,  is  the  one  who  be- 
comes a  leader.    It  is  a  vicious  circle — the  more 
warlike  the  times,  the  more  reckless  the  leader 
who  is  demanded,  and  his  reckless  course  prolongs 
the  struggle.    Such  men  make  their  appeal  to 
loyalty  for  the  union,  to  hatred  and  to  contempt 
for  the  "non-union"  man.    Mutual  hate  towards 
a  non-unionist  may  have  in  it  the  mere  beginnings 
of  fellowship,  the  protoplasm  of  tribal  fealty,  but 
no  more.    When  it  is  carried  over  into  civilized 
144 


GROUP  MORALITY 


life  it  becomes  a  social  deterrent  and  an  actual 
menace  to  social  relations. 

In  a  sense  it  is  fair  to  hold  every  institution 
responsible  for  the  type  of  man  whom  it  tends 
to  bring  to  the  front,  and  the  type  of  organization 
which  clings  to  war  methods  must,  of  course, 
consider  it  nobler  to  yield  to  force  than  to  justice. 
The  earlier  struggle  of  democracy  was  for  its 
recognition  as  a  possible  form  of  government 
and  the  struggle  is  now  on  to  prove  democracy 
an  efficient  form  of  government.    So  the  earlier 
struggles  of  trades  unions  were  for  mere  existence, 
and  the  struggle  has  now  passed  into  one  for  a 
recognition  of  contractual  relations  and  collective 
bargaining  which  will  make  trades  unions  an  ef- 
fective industrial  instrument.    It  is  much  less 
justifiable  of  course  in  the  later  effort  than  it  was 
in  the  earlier  to  carry  on  the  methods  of  primitive 
warfare. 

This  new  effort,  however,  from  the  very  nature 
of  things,  is  bringing  another  type  of  union  man 
into  office  and  is  modifying  the  entire  situation. 
The  old-time  agitator  is  no  longer  useful  and  a 
cooler  man  is  needed  for  collective  bargaining.  At 
the  same  time  the  employers  must  put  forth  a 
more  democratic  and  a  more  reasonable  type  of 
man  if  they  would  bear  their  side  of  this  new 
bargaining,  so  that  it  has  come  about  quite 


NEWER  IDEALS   OF  PEACE 

recently  that  the  first  attempts  have  been  made  in 
Chicago  towards  controlHng  in  the  interests  of 
business  itself  this  natural  tendency  of  group 
morality. 

It  may  offer  another  example  of  business  and 
commerce,  affording  us  a  larger  morality  than 
that  which  the  moralists  themselves  teach.  Cer- 
tain it  is  that  the  industrial  problems  engendered 
by  the  industrial  revolutions  of  the  last  century, 
and  fliung  upon  this  century  for  solution,  can 
never  be  solved  by  class  warfare  nor  yet  by  ignor- 
ing their  existence  in  the  optimism  of  ignorance. 

America  is  only  beginning  to  realize,  and  has 
not  yet  formulated,  all  the  implications  of  the 
factory  system  and  of  the  conditions  of  living 
which  this  well-established  system  imposes  upon 
the  workers.  As  we  feel  it  closing  down  upon 
us,  moments  of  restlessness  and  resentment  seize 
us  all.  The  protest  against  John  Mitchell's  state- 
ment ^  that  the  American  workingman  has  recog- 
nized that  he  is  destined  to  remain  a  workingman, 
is  a  case  in  point.  In  their  attempt  to  formulate 
and  correct  various  industrial  ills,  trades  unions 
are  often  blamed  for  what  is  inherent  in  the  fac- 
tory system  itself  and  for  those  evils  which  can 
be  cured  only  through  a  modification  of  that 
system.    For  instance,  factory  workers  in  gen- 

*  Organized  Labor,  John  Mitchell.  Preface. 

146 


GROUP  MORALITY 


eral  have  for  years  exhibited  a  tendency  to 
regulate  the  output  of  each  worker  to  a  certain 
amount  which  they  consider  a  fair  day's  work, 
although  to  many  a  worker  such  a  restricted  out- 
put may  prove  to  be  less  than  a  fair  day's  work. 
The  result  is,  of  course,  disastrous  to  the  workers 
themselves  as  well  as  to  the  factory  management, 
for  it  doubtless  is  quite  as  injurious  to  a  man's 
nervous  system  to  retard  his  natural  pace  as  it  is 
to  unduly  accelerate  it.    The  real  trouble,  which 
this  "limitation"  is  an  awkward  attempt  to  cor- 
rect, is  involved  in  the  fact  that  the  intricate  sub- 
division of  factory  work,  and  the  lack  of  under- 
standing on  the  part  of  employees  of  the  finished 
product,  has  made  an  unnatural  situation,  in  which 
the  worker  has  no  normal  interest  in  his  work  and 
no  direct  relation  to  it.   In  the  various  makeshifts 
on  the  part  of  the  manufacturer  to  supply  motives 
which  shall  take  the  place  of  the  natural  ones  so 
obviously  missing,  many  devices  have  been  re- 
sorted to,  such  as  "speeding  up"  machinery, 
"setting  the  pace,"  and  substituting  "piece  work" 
for  day  work.    The  manufacturers  may  justly 
say  that  they  have  been  driven  to  these  various 
expedients,  not  only  by  the  factory  conditions, 
but  by  the  natural  laziness  of  men.  Neverthe- 
less reaction  from  such  a  course  is  inevitably  an 
uncompromising  attempt  on  the  part  of  the  work- 
147 


NEWER   IDEALS   OF  PEACE 


ers  to  protect  themselves  from  overexertion  and 
to  regulate  the  output.  The  worst  cases  I  have 
ever  known  have  occurred  in  unorganized  shops 
and  have  been  unregulated  and  unaided  by  any 
trades  union.  The  *'pace  setter"  in  such  a  shop 
is  often  driven  out  and  treated  with  the  same 
animosity  which  the  ''scab"  receives  in  a  union 
shop. 

In  the  same  spirit  we  blame  trades  unionists 
for  that  disgraceful  attitude  which  they  have 
from  time  to  time  taken  against  the  introduction 
of  improved  machinery — a  small  group  blindly 
attempting  to  defend  what  they  consider  their 
only  chance  to  work.    The  economists  have  done 
surprisingly  little  to  shed  light  upon  this  diffi- 
culty; indeed,  they  are  somewhat  responsible  for 
its  exaggeration.    Their  old  theory  of  a  ''wage 
fund"  which  did  not  reach  the  rank  and  file  of 
trades  unionists  until  at  least  in  its  first  form 
it  had  been  abandoned  by  the  leading  economists, 
has  been  responsible  both  for  much  disorder  along 
this  line,  and  for  the  other  mistaken  attempt  "to 
make  work  for  more  men." 

A  society  which  made  some  effort  to  secure 
an  equitable  distribution  of  the  leisure  and  in- 
creased ease  which  new  inventions  imply  would 
remove  the  temptations  as  well  as  the  odium  of 
such  action  from  the  men  who  are  blinded  by 
143 


GROUP  MORALITY 


what  they  consider  an  infringement  of  their 
rights. 

If  the  wonderful  inventions  of  machinery,  as 
they  came  along  during  the  last  century,  could 
have  been  regarded  as  in  some  sense  social  pos- 
sessions, the  worst  evils  attending  the  factory 
system  of  production — starvation  wages,  exhaust- 
ing hours,  unnecessary  monotony,  child  labor, 
and  all  the  rest  of  the  wretched  list — might  have 
been  avoided  in  the  interest  of  society  itself.  All 
this  would  have  come  about  had  human  welfare 
been  earlier  regarded  as  a  legitimate  object  of 
social  interest. 

But  no  such  ethics  had  been  developed  in  the 
beginning  of  this  century.  Society  regarded 
machinery  as  the  absolute  possession  of  the  man 
who  owned  it  at  the  moment  it  became  a  finished 
product,  quite  irrespective  of  the  long  line  of  in- 
ventors and  workmen  who  represented  its  gradual 
growth  and  development.  Society  was,  therei- 
fore,  destined  to  all  the  maladjustment  which 
this  century  has  encountered.  Is  it  the  militant 
spirit  once  more  as  over  against  the  newer  human- 
itarianism?  The  possessor  of  the  machine,  like 
the  possessor  of  arms  who  preceded  him,  regards 
it  as  a  legitimate  weapon  for  exploitation,  as  the 
former  held  his  sword. 

One  of  the  exhibits  in  the  Paris  Exposition  of 
149 


NEWER  IDEALS   OF  PEACE 


1900  presented  a  contrast  between  a  mediaeval 
drawing  of  a  castle  towering  above  the  hamlets  of 
its  protected  serfs,  and  a  modern  photograph  of 
the  same  hill  covered  with  a  huge  factory  which 
overlooked  the  villages  of  its  dependent  workmen. 
The  two  pictures  of  the  same  hill  and  of  the  same 
plain  bore  more  than  a  geographic  resemblance. 
This  suggestion  of  modern  exploitation  would  be 
impossible  had  we  learned  the  first  lessons  which 
an  enlarged  industrialism  might  teach  us.  Class 
and  group  divisions  with  their  divergent  moral- 
ities become  most  dangerous  when  their  members 
believe  that  the  inferior  group  or  class  cannot  be 
appealed  to  by  reason  and  fair  dealing,  but  must 
be  treated  upon  a  lower  plane.  Terrorism  is  con- 
sidered necessary  and  legitimate  that  they  may 
be  inhibited  by  fear  from  committing  certain  acts. 
So  far  as  employers  exhibit  this  spirit  toward 
workmen,  or  trades  unionists  toward  non-union- 
ists, they  inevitably  revert  to  the  use  of  brute 
force — ^to  the  methods  of  warfare. 


150 


CHAPTER  VI 


PROTECTION  OF  CHILDREN  FOR  INDUSTRIAL 
EFFICIENCY 

In  the  previous  chapters  it  was  stated  that 
the  United  States,  compared  to  the  most  advanced 
European  nations,  is  deficient  in  protective  legis- 
lation. This,  as  has  been  said,  is  the  result  of 
the  emphasis  placed  upon  personal  liberty  at  the 
date  of  the  first  constitutional  conventions  and 
of  the  inherited  belief  in  America  that  govern- 
ment is  of  necessity  oppressive,  and  its  functions 
not  to  be  lightly  extended. 

It  is  also  possible  that  this  protection  of  the 
humblest  citizen  has  been  pushed  forward  in  those 
countries  of  a  homogeneous  population  more 
rapidly  than  in  America,  because  of  that  uncon- 
scious attitude  of  contempt  which  the  nationality 
at  the  moment  representing  economic  success  al- 
ways takes  toward  the  weaker  and  less  capable. 
There  is  no  doubt  that  we  all  despise  our  immi- 
grants a  little  because  of  their  economic  standing. 
The  newly  arrived  immigrant  goes  very  largely 
into  unskilled  work ;  he  builds  the  railroads,  digs 
the  sewers,  he  does  the  sort  of  labor  the  English 
151 


NEWER   IDEALS   OF  PEACE 


Speaking  American  soon  gets  rid  of;  and  then, 
because  he  is  in  this  lowest  economic  class,  he 
falls  into  need,  and  we  complain  that  in  America 
the  immigrant  makes  the  largest  claim  upon 
charitable  funds.  Yet  in  England,  where  immi- 
gration has  counted  for  very  little;  in  Germany, 
where  it  has  counted  almost  not  at  all,  we  find 
the  same  claim  made  upon  the  public  funds  by 
people  who  do  the  same  unskilled  work,  who  are 
paid  the  same  irregular  and  low  wages.  In 
Germany,  where  this  matter  is  approached,  not 
from  the  charitable,  but  from  the  patriotic  side, 
there  is  a  tremendous  code  of  legislation  for  the 
protection  of  the  men  who  hold  to  life  by  the  most 
uncertain  economic  tenure.  In  England  there 
exists  an  elaborated  code  of  labor  laws,  protecting 
the  laborer  at  all  times  from  accidents,  in  ways 
unknown  in  America.  Here  we  have  only  the 
beginning  of  all  that  legislation,  partly  because 
we  have  not  yet  broken  through  the  belief  that 
the  man  who  does  this  casual  work  is  not  yet 
quite  one  of  ourselves.  We  do  not  consider  him 
entitled  to  the  protective  legislation  which  is  se- 
cured for  him  in  other  countries  where  he  is  quite 
simply  a  fellow-citizen,  humble  it  may  be,  but  still 
bound  to  the  governing  class  by  ties  of  blood  and 
homogeneity. 

Our  moral  attitude  toward  one  group  in  the 
152 


PROTECTION   OF  CHILDREN 


community  is  a  determining  factor  of  our  moral 
attitude  toward  other  groups,  and  this  relation  of 
kindly  contempt,  of  charitable  rather  than  demo- 
cratic obHgation,  may  lend  some  explanation  to 
the  fact  that  the  United  States,  as  a  nation,  is  sad- 
ly in  arrears  in  the  legislation  designed  for  the 
protection  of  children.  In  the  Southern  States, 
where  a  contemptuous  attitude  towards  a  weaker 
people  has  had  the  most  marked  effect  upon  public 
feeling,  we  have  not  only  the  largest  number  of 
unprotected  working  children,  but  the  largest 
number  of  illiterate  children  as  well.  There  are, 
in  the  United  States,  according  to  the  latest 
census  ^  580,000  children  between  the  ages  of  ten 
and  fourteen  years,  who  cannot  read  nor  write. 
They  are  not  the  immigrant  children.  They  are 
our  own  native-born  children.  Of  these  570,000 
are  in  the  Southern  States  and  ten  thousand  of 
them  are  scattered  over  the  rest  of  the  Republic. 

The  same  thing  is  true  of  our  children  at  work. 
We  have  two  millions  of  them,  according  to  the 
census  of  1900 — children  under  the  age  of  six- 
teen years  who  are  earning  their  own  livings. 

Legislation  of  the  States  south  of  Maryland 
for  the  children  is  like  the  legislation  of  England 
in  1844.    We  are  sixty-two  years  behind  England 

*For  further  analysis  of  the  census  figures  relating  to  chil- 
dren, consult  "Some  Ethical  Gains  Through  Legislation." 
Mrs.  Florence  Kelley. 

153 


NEWER   IDEALS   OF  PEACE 


in  caring  for  the  children  of  the  textile  industries. 

May  we  not  also  trace  some  of  this  national 
indifference  to  the  disposition  of  the  past  century 
to  love  children  without  really  knowing  them? 
We  refuse  to  recognize  them  as  the  great  national 
asset  and  are  content  to  surround  them  with  a 
glamour  of  innocence  and  charm.  We  put  them 
prematurely  to  work,  ignorant  of  the  havoc  it 
brings,  because  no  really  careful  study  has  been 
made  of  their  capacities  and  possibilities — ^that 
is,  no  study  really  fitted  to  the  industrial  condi- 
tions in  which  they  live. 

Each  age  has,  of  course,  its  own  temptations 
and  above  all  its  own  peculiar  industrial  tempta- 
tions and  needs  to  see  them  not  only  in  the  light 
of  the  increased  sensibility  and  higher  ethical 
standards  of  its  contemporaries,  but  also  in  rela- 
tion to  its  peculiar  industrial  development.  When 
we  ask  why  it  is  that  child-labor  has  been  given 
to  us  to  discuss  and  to  rectify,  rather  than  to  the 
people  who  lived  before  us,  we  need  only  to  re- 
member that,  for  the  first  time  in  industrial  his- 
tory, the  labor  of  the  little  child  has  in  many 
industries  become  as  valuable  as  that  of  a  man  or 
woman.  The  old-fashioned  weaver  was  obliged 
to  possess  skill  and  strength  to  pull  his  beam  back 
and  forth.  It  is  only  through  the  elaborated  in- 
ventions of  our  own  age  that  skill  as  well  as 
154 


PROTECTION   OF  CHILDREN 


strength  has  been  so  largely  eliminated  that,  for 
example,  a  little  child  may  ''tend  the  thread"  in  a 
textile  mill  almost  as  well  as  an  adult.  This  is 
true  of  so  many  industries  that  the  temptation  to 
exploit  premature  labor  has  become  peculiar  to 
this  industrial  epoch  and  we  are  tempted  as  never 
before  to  use  the  labor  of  little  children. 

What,  then,  are  we  going  to  do  about  it  ?  How 
deeply  are  we  concerned  that  this  labor  shall  not 
result  to  the  detriment  of  the  child,  and  what 
excuses  are  we  making  to  ourselves  for  thus  pre- 
maturely using  up  the  strength  which  really 
belongs  to  the  next  generation?  Of  course,  it  is 
always  difficult  to  see  the  wrong  in  a  familiar 
thing;  it  is  almost  a  test  of  moral  insight  to  be 
able  to  see  that  an  affair  of  familiar  intercourse 
and  daily  living  may  also  be  wrong.  I  have  taken 
a  Chicago  street-car  on  a  night  in  December  at 
ten  o'clock,  when  dozens  of  little  girls  who  had 
worked  in  the  department  stores  all  day  were  also 
boarding  the  cars.  I  know,  as  many  others  do, 
that  these  children  will  not  get  into  their  beds 
before  midnight,  and  that  they  will  have  to  be  up 
again  early  in  the  morning  to  go  to  their  daily 
work.  And  yet  because  I  have  seen  it  many 
times  I  take  my  car  almost  placidly — I  am  happy 
to  say,  not  quite  placidly.  Almost  every  day 
at  six  o'clock  I  see  certain  factories  pouring  out 
155 


NEWER   IDEALS   OF  PEACE 

a  Stream  of  men  and  women  and  boys  and  girls. 
The  boys  and  girls  have  a  peculiar  hue — a  color 
so  distinctive  that  one  meeting  them  on  the  street, 
even  on  Sunday  when  they  are  in  their  best  clothes 
and  mingled  with  other  children  who  go  to  school 
and  play  out  of  doors,  can  distinguish  them  in  an 
instant,  and  there  is  on  their  faces  a  premature 
anxiety  and  sense  of  responsibility,  which  we 
should  declare  pathetic  if  we  were  not  used  to  it. 

How  far  are  we  responsible  when  we  allow 
custom  to  blind  our  eyes  to  the  things  that  are 
wrong?  In  spite  of  the  enormous  growth  in 
charitable  and  correctional  agencies  designed  for 
children,  are  we  really  so  lacking  in  moral  insight 
and  vigor  that  we  fail  even  to  perceive  the  real 
temptation  of  our  age  and  totally  fail  to  grapple 
with  it?  An  enlightened  State  which  regarded 
the  industrial  situation  seriously  would  wish  to 
conserve  the  ability  of  its  youth,  to  give  them  val- 
uable training  in  relation  to  industry,  quite  as  the 
old-fashioned  State  carefully  calculated  the  years 
which  were  the  most  valuable  for  military  train- 
ing. The  latter,  looking  only  toward  the  preser- 
vation of  the  State,  took  infinite  pains,  while  we 
are  careless  in  regard  to  the  much  greater  task 
which  has  to  do  with  its  upbuilding  and  extension. 
We  conscientiously  ignore  industry  in  relation  to 
government  and  because  we  assume  that  its  regu- 
156 


PROTECTION   OF  CHILDREN 


lation  is  unnecessary,  so  we  conclude  that  the  pro- 
tection of  the  young  from  premature  participation 
in  its  mighty  operations  is  not  the  concern  of  the 
Government. 

The  municipal  lodging-house  in  Chicago  in 
addition  to  housing  vagrants,  makes  an  intelligent 
effort  to  put  them  into  regular  industry.  A 
physician  in  attendance  makes  a  careful  examina- 
tion of  each  man  who  comes  to  the  lodging-house, 
and  one  winter  we  tried  to  see  what  connection 
could  be  genuinely  established  between  premature 
labor  and  worn-out  men.  It  is  surprising  to  find 
how  many  of  them  are  tired  to  death  of  monoto- 
nous labor,  and  begin  to  tramp  in  order  to  get 
away  from  it — as  a  business  man  goes  to  the 
woods  because  he  is  worn  out  with  the  stress  of 
business  life.  This  inordinate  desire  to  get  away 
from  work  seems  to  be  connected  with  the  fact 
that  the  men  started  to  work  very  early,  before 
they  had  the  physique  to  stand  up  to  it,  or  the  men- 
tal vigor  with  which  to  overcome  its  difficulties,  or 
the  moral  stamina  which  makes  a  man  stick  to  his 
work  whether  he  likes  it  or  not.  But  we  cannot 
demand  any  of  these  things  from  the  growing 
boy.  They  are  all  traits  of  the  adult.  A  boy  is 
naturally  restless,  his  determination  easily  breaks 
down,  and  he  runs  away.  At  least  this  seems  to 
be  true  of  many  of  the  men  who  come  to  the 
157 


NEWER  IDEALS   OF  PEACE 


lodging-house.  I  recall  a  man  who  had  begun  to 
work  in  a  textile  mill  quite  below  the  present  legal 
age  in  New  England,  and  who  had  worked  hard 
for  sixteen  years.  He  told  his  tale  with  all 
simplicity;  and,  as  he  made  a  motion  with  his 
hand,  he  said,  "I  done  that  for  sixteen  years.'* 
I  give  the  words  as  he  gave  them.  "At  last  I 
was  sick  in  bed  for  two  or  three  weeks  with  a 
fever,  and  when  I  crawled  out,  I  made  up  my 
mind  that  I  would  rather  go  to  hell  than  to  go 
back  to  that  mill."  Whether  he  considered 
Chicago  as  equivalent  to  that,  I  do  not  know; 
but  he  certainly  tramped  to  Chicago,  and  has 
been  tramping  for  four  years.  He  does  not  steal. 
He  works  in  a  lumber  camp  occasionally,  and 
wanders  about  the  rest  of  the  time  getting  odd 
jobs  when  he  can;  but  the  suggestion  of  a  factory 
throws  him  into  a  panic,  and  causes  him  quickly 
to  disappear  from  the  lodging-house.  The  phy- 
sician has  made  a  diagnosis  of  general  debility. 
The  man  is  not  fit  for  steady  work.  He  has  been 
whipped  in  the  battle  of  life,  and  is  spent  pre- 
maturely because  he  began  prematurely. 

Yet  the  state  makes  no  careful  study  as  to  the 
effect  upon  children  of  the  subdivided  labor  which 
many  of  them  perform  in  factories.  A  child  who 
remains  year  after  year  in  a  spinning  room  gets 
no  instruction — merely  a  dull  distaste  for  work. 
158 


PROTECTION   OF  CHILDREN 


Often  he  cannot  stand  up  to  the  grind  of  factory 
life,  and  he  breaks  down  under  it. 

What  does  this  mean  ?  That  we  have  no  right 
to  increase  the  list  of  paupers — of  those  who  must 
be  cared  for  by  municipal  and  State  agencies 
because  when  they  were  still  immature  and  unde- 
veloped, they  were  subjected  to  a  tremendous 
pressure.  I  recall  one  family  of  five  children 
which,  upon  the  death  of  the  energetic  mother 
who  had  provided  for  it  by  means  of  a  little 
dress-making  establishment,  was  left  to  the  care 
of  a  feeble  old  grandmother.  The  father  was  a 
drunkard  who  had  never  supported  his  family, 
and  at  this  time  he  definitely  disappeared.  The 
oldest  boy  was  almost  twelve  years  old — a  fine, 
manly  little  fellow,  who  felt  keenly  his  obligation 
to  care  for  the  family. 

We  found  him  a  place  as  cash-boy  in  a  depart- 
ment store  for  two  dollars  a  week.  He  held  it 
for  three  years,  although  his  enthusiasm  failed 
somewhat  as  the  months  went  by,  and  he  grad- 
ually discovered  how  little  help  his  wages  were 
to  the  family  exchequer  after  his  carfare,  decent 
clothes  and  unending  pairs  of  shoes  were  paid  for. 
Before  the  end  of  the  third  year  he  had  become 
listless  and  indifferent  to  his  work,  in  spite  of  the 
increase  of  fifty  cents  a  week.  In  the  hope  that 
a  change  would  be  good  for  him,  a  place  as  ele- 
159 


NEWER  IDEALS   OF  PEACE 

vator-boy  was  secured.  This  he  was  unable  to 
keep,  and  then  one  situation  after  another  sHpped 
through  his  grasp,  until  a  typhoid  fever  which 
he  developed  at  the  age  of  .fifteen,  seemed  to  ex- 
plain his  apathy. 

After  a  long  illness  and  a  poor  recovery,  he 
worked  less  well.  Finally,  at  the  age  of  sixteen, 
when  he  should  have  been  able  really  to  help  the 
little  family  and  perhaps  be  its  main  support,  he 
had  become  a  professional  tramp,  and  eventually 
dropped  completely  from  our  knowledge.  It  was 
through  such  bitter  lessons  as  these  we  learned 
that  good  intentions  and  the  charitable  impulse 
do  not  always  work  for  righteousness;  that  to 
force  the  moral  nature  of  a  child  and  to  put  tasks 
upon  him  beyond  his  normal  growth,  is  quite  as 
cruel  and  disastrous  as  to  expect  his  undeveloped 
muscle  to  lift  huge  weights. 

Adolescence  is  filled  with  strange  pauses  of 
listlessness  and  dreaminess.  At  that  period  the 
human  will  is  perhaps  further  away  from  the  de- 
sire of  definite  achievement  than  it  ever  is  again. 
To  work  ten  hours  a  day  for  six  days  in  a  week  in 
order  to  buy  himself  a  pair  of  stout  boots,  that  he 
may  be  properly  shod  to  go  to  work  some  more, 
is  the  very  last  thing  which  really  appeals  to  a  boy 
of  thirteen  or  fourteen.  If  he  is  forced  to  such 
a  course  too  often,  his  cheated  nature  later  re- 
i6o 


PROTECTION   OF  CHILDREN 


asserts  itself  in  all  sorts  of  decadent  and  abnormal 
ways. 

An  enlightened  state  would  also  concern  itself 
with  the  effect  of  child  labor  upon  the  parents. 
We  have  in  Chicago  a  great  many  European  im- 
migrants, people  who  have  come  from  country 
life  in  Bohemia  or  the  south  of  Italy,  hoping  that 
their  children  will  have  a  better  chance  here  than 
at  home.  In  the  old  country  these  immigrants 
worked  on  farms  which  provided  a  very  normal 
activity  for  a  young  boy  or  girl.  When  they 
come  to  Chicago,  they  see  no  reason  why  their 
children  should  not  go  to  work,  because  they  see 
no  difference  between  the  normal  activity  of  their 
own  youth  and  the  grinding  life,  to  which  they 
subject  their  children.  It  is  difficult  for  a  man 
who  has  grown  up  in  outdoor  life  to  adapt  him- 
self to  the  factory.  The  same  experience  is 
found  in  the  South  with  the  men  who  come  to 
the  textile  towns  from  the  little  farms.  They 
resent  monotonous  petty  work,  and  get  away 
from  it;  they  will  in  preference  take  more  poorly 
paid  work,  care  of  horses  or  janitor  service — 
work  which  has  some  similarity  to  that  to  which 
they  have  been  accustomed.  So  the  parents 
drop  out,  and  the  children,  making  the  adapta- 
tion, remain,  and  the  curious  result  ensues  of 
the  head  of  the  household  becoming  dependent 
II  i6i 


NEWER   IDEALS   OF  PEACE 


Upon  the  earnings  of  the  child.  You  will  hear 
a  child  say,  "My  mother  can't  say  nothing  to  me. 
I  pay  the  rent or,  "I  can  do  what  I  please,  be- 
cause I  bring  home  the  biggest  wages.''  All  this 
tends  to  break  down  the  normal  relation  between 
parents  and  children.  The  Italian  men  who 
work  on  the  railroads  in  the  summer  find  it  a 
great  temptation  to  settle  down  in  the  winter 
upon  the  wages  of  their  children.  A  young 
man  from  the  south  of  Italy  was  mourning  the 
death  of  his  Httle  girl  of  twelve;  in  his  grief 
he  said,  quite  simply,  "She  was  my  oldest  kid. 
In  two  years  she  could  have  supported  me,  and 
now  I  shall  have  to  work  five  or  six  years 
longer  until  the  next  one  can  do  it."  He  ex- 
pected to  retire  permanently  at  thirty-four.  That 
breaking  down  of  the  normal  relation  of  parent 
and  child,  and  the  tendency  to  demoralize  the 
parent,  is  something  we  have  no  right  to  subject 
him  to.  We  ought  to  hold  the  parent  up  to  the 
obligation  which  he  would  have  fulfilled  had  he 
remained  in  his  early  environment. 

A  modern  state  might  rightly  concern  itself 
with  the  efifect  of  child  labor  upon  industry  itself. 
There  has  been  for  many  years  an  increasing 
criticism  of  the  modern  factory  system,  not  only 
from  the  point  of  view  of  the  worker,  but  from 
the  point  of  view  of  the  product  itself.  It  has 
162 


PROTECTION   OF  CHILDREN 


been  said  many  times  that  we  can  not  secure  good 
workmanship  nor  turn  out  a  satisfactory  product 
unless  men  and  women  have  some  sort  of  interest 
in  their  work,  and  some  way  of  expressing  that 
interest  in  relation  to  it.    The  system  which 
makes  no  demand  upon  originality,  upon  inven- 
tion, upon  self-direction,  works  automatically,  as 
it  were,  towards  an  unintelligent  producer  and 
towards  an  uninteresting  product.    This  was 
said  at  first  only  by  such  artists  and  social  re- 
formers as  Morris  and  Ruskin;  but  it  is  being 
gradually  admitted  by  men  of  affairs  and  may  at 
last  incorporate  itself  into  actual  factory  manage- 
ment, in  which  case  the  factory  itself  will  favor 
child  labor  legislation  or  any  other  measure 
which  increases  the  free  and  full  development  of 
the  individual,  because  he  thereby  becomes  a 
more  valuable  producer.    We  may  gradually  dis- 
cover that  in  the  interests  of  this  industrial 
society  of  ours  it  becomes  a  distinct  loss  to  put 
large  numbers  of  producers  prematurely  at  work, 
not  only  because  the  community  inevitably  loses 
their  mature  working  power,  but  also  because 
their  "free  labor  quality,"  which  is  so  valuable, 
is  permanently  destroyed. 

Exercise  of  the  instinct  of  workmanship  not 
only  affords  great  satisfaction  to  the  producer, 
but  also  to  the  consumer,  if  he  be  possessed  of  any 
163 


NEWER   IDEALS   OF  PEACE 


critical  faculty,  or  have  developed  genuine  powers 
of  appreciation.  Added  to  the  conscience  which 
protests  against  the  social  waste  of  child  labor, 
we  have  the  taste  that  revolts  against  a  product 
totally  without  the  charm  which  pleasure  in  work 
creates.  We  may  at  last  discover  that  we  are 
imperiling  our  civilization  at  the  moment  of  its 
marked  materialism,  by  wantonly  sacrificing  to 
that  materialism  the  eternal  spirit  of  youth,  the 
power  of  variation,  which  alone  is  able  to  prevent 
it  from  degenerating  into  a  mere  mechanism. 

It  would  be  easy  to  produce  many  illustrations 
to  demonstrate  that  in  the  leading  industrial 
countries  a  belief  is  slowly  developing  that  the 
workman  himself  is  the  chief  asset,  and  that  the 
intelligent  interest  of  skilled  men,  the  power  of 
self-direction  and  co-operation  which  is  only 
possible  among  the  free-born  and  educated,  is 
exactly  the  only  thing  which  will  hold  out  in  the 
markets  of  the  world.  As  the  foremen  of  fac- 
tories testify  again  and  again,  factory  discipline 
is  valuable  only  up  to  a  certain  point,  after  which 
something  else  must  be  depended  on  if  the  best 
results  are  to  be  achieved. 

Monopoly  of  both  the  raw  material  and  the 
newly-opened  markets  is  certainly  a  valuable  fact- 
or in  a  nation's  industrial  prosperity;  but  while 
we  spend  blood  and  treasure  to  protect  one  and 
164 


PROTECTION    OF  CHILDREN 


secure  the  other,  we  wantonly  destroy  the  most 
vaUiable  factor  of  all,  intelligent  labor.  Nothing 
can  help  us  here  save  the  rising  tide  of  humanita- 
rianism,  which  is  not  only  emotional  enough  to 
regret  the  pitiless  and  stupid  waste  of  this  power 
but  also  intelligent  enough  to  perceive  what  might 
be  accomplished  by  its  utilization. 

We  are  told  that  the  German  products  hold  a 
foremost  place  in  the  markets  of  the  world  because 
of  Germany's  fine  educational  system,  which  in- 
cludes training  in  trade-schools  for  so  many  young 
men.  We  know,  too,  that  there  is  at  the  present 
moment  a  strong  party  in  Germany  opposing 
militarism,  not  from  the  ''peace  society''  point  of 
view,  but  because  it  withdraws  all  the  young  men 
from  the  industrial  life  for  the  best  part  of  three 
years  during  which  their  activity  is  merely  dis- 
ciplinary, with  no  relation  to  the  industrial  life  of 
the  nation.  This -anti-military  party  insists  that 
the  loss  of  the  three  years  is  a  serious  matter,  and 
that  one  nation  cannot  successfully  hold  its  ad- 
vance position  if  it  must  compete  with  other  na- 
tions which  are  also  establishing  trade-schools 
but  which  do  not  thus  withdraw  their  youth  from 
continuous  training  at  the  period  of  their  greatest 
docility  and  aptitude. 

England  is  discovering  that  the  cheap  markets 
afforded  by  semi-savage  peoples,  which  she  has 
165 


NEWER   IDEALS   OF  PEACE 


thrown  open  to  her  manufacturers,  are  now  react- 
ing in  the  debasement  of  her  products  and  her  fac- 
tory workers.  The  manufacturer  produces  the 
cheap  and  inferior  articles  which  he  imagines  the 
new  commerce  will  demand.  The  result  upon 
the  workers  in  the  factories  producing  these  un- 
worthy goods,  is  that  they  are  robbed  of  the  skill 
which  would  be  demanded  if  they  were  minister- 
ing to  an  increasing  demand  of  taste  and  if  they 
were  supplying  the  market  of  a  civilized  people. 
It  would  be  a  curious  result  of  misapplied  energy 
if  those  very  markets  which  the  Briton  has  so 
eagerly  sought,  would  finally  so  debase  the  Eng- 
lish producers  that  all  the  increased  wealth  the 
markets  have  brought  to  the  nation  would  be  con- 
sumed in  efforts  to  redeem  the  debased  working 
population. 

We  have  made  public  education  our  great  con- 
cern in  America,  and  perhaps  the  public-school 
system  is  our  most  distinctive  achievement;  but 
there  is  a  certain  lack  of  consistency  in  the  rela- 
tion of  the  State  to  the  child  after  he  leaves  the 
public  school.  At  great  expense  the  State  has 
provided  school  buildings  and  equipment,  and 
other  buildings  in  which  to  prepare  professional 
teachers.  It  has  spared  no  pains  to  make  the 
system  complete,  and  yet  as  rapidly  as  the  chil- 
dren leave  the  schoolroom,  the  State  seems  to  lose 
i66 


PROTECTION    OF  CHILDREN 


all  interest  and  responsibility  in  their  welfare  and 
has,  until  quite  recently,  turned  them  over  to  the 
employer  with  no  restrictions. 

At  no  point  does  the  community  say  to  the 
employer.  We  are  allowing  you  to  profit  by  the 
labor  of  these  children  whom  we  have  educated 
at  great  cost,  and  we  demand  that  they  do  not 
work  so  many  hours  that  they  shall  be  exhausted. 
Nor  shall  they  be  allowed  to  undertake  the  sort 
of  labor  which  is  beyond  their  strength,  nor  shall 
they  spend  their  time  at  work  that  is  absolutely 
devoid  of  educational  value.  The  preliminary 
education  which  they  have  received  in  school  is 
but  one  step  in  the  process  of  making  them  valu- 
able and  normal  citizens,  and  we  cannot  afford 
to  have  that  intention  thwarted,  even  though  the 
community  as  well  as  yourself  may  profit  by  the 
business  activity  which  your  factory  aflfords. 

Such  a  position  seems  perfectly  reasonable,  yet 
the  same  citizens  who  willingly  pay  taxes  to  sup- 
port an  elaborate  public-school  system,  strenuous- 
ly oppose  the  most  moderate  attempts  to  guard 
the  children  from  needless  and  useless  exploita- 
tion after  they  have  left  school  and  have  entered 
industry. 

We  are  forced  to  believe  that  child  labor  :s 
a  national  problem,  even  as  public  education  is  a 
national  duty.    The  children  of  Alabama,  Rhode 
167 


NEWER   IDEALS   OF  PEACE 

Island,  and  Pennsylvania  belong  to  the  nation 
quite  as  much  as  they  belong  to  each  State,  and 
the  nation  has  an  interest  in  the  children  at  least 
in  relation  to  their  industrial  efficiency,  quite 
as  it  has  an  interest  in  enacting  protective  tariffs 
for  the  preservation  of  American  industries. 

Uniform  compulsory  education  laws  in  con- 
nection with  uniform  child  labor  legislation  are 
the  important  factors  in  securing  educated  pro- 
ducers for  the  nation.  Fortunately,  a  new  edu- 
cation is  arising  which  endeavors  to  widen  and 
organize  the  child's  experience  with  reference  to 
the  world  in  which  he  lives/  The  new  peda- 
gogy holds  that  it  is  a  child's  instinct  and  pleasure 
to  exercise  all  his  faculties  and  to  make  discoveries 
in  the  world  around  him.  It  is  the  chief  business 
of  the  teacher  merely  to  direct  his  activity  and  to 
feed  his  insatiable  curiosity.  In  order  to  ac- 
complish this,  he  is  forced  to  relate  the  child  to 
the  surroundings  in  which  he  lives;  and  the 
most  advanced  schools  are,  perforce,  using  mod- 
ern industry  for  this  purpose.  The  educators 
have  ceased  to  mourn  industrial  conditions  of  the 
past  generation,  when  children  were  taught  agri- 
cultural and  industrial  arts  by  the  natural  co- 
operation with  their  parents,  and  they  are  en- 
deavoring to  supply  this  inadequacy  by  manual 
arts  in  the  school,  by  courses  in  industrial  history, 
*  School  and  Society,  by  John  Dewey. 

I68 


PROTECTION   OF  CHILDREN 


and  by  miniature  reproductions  of  industrial 
processes,  thus  constantly  coming  into  better  re- 
lations with  the  present  factory  system.  These 
educators  recognize  the  significance  and  power 
of  contemporary  industrialism,  and  hold  it  an 
obligation  to  protect  children  from  premature 
participation  in  our  industrial  life,  only  that 
the  children  may  secure  the  training  and  fibre 
which  will  later  make  this  participation  effective, 
and  that  their  minds  may  finally  take  possession 
of  the  machines  which  they  will  guide  and  feed. 

But  there  is  another  side  to  the  benefits  of  child- 
labor  legislation  represented  by  the  time  element, 
the  leisure  which  is  secured  to  the  child  for  the 
pursuit  of  his  own  affairs,  quite  aside  from  the 
opportunity  afforded  him  to  attend  school.  Help- 
lessness in  childhood,  the  scientists  tell  us,  is  the 
guarantee  of  adult  intellect,  but  they  also  assert 
that  play  in  youth  is  the  guarantee  of  adult  cul- 
ture. It  is  the  most  valuable  instrument  the  race 
possesses  to  keep  life  from  becoming  mechanical. 

The  child  who  cannot  live  life  is  prone  to  dram- 
atize it,  and  the  very  process  is  a  constant  com- 
promise between  imitation  and  imagination,  as  the 
over-mastering  impulse  itself  which  drives  him 
to  incessant  play  is  both  reminiscent  and  antici- 
patory. In  proportion  as  the  child  in  later  life 
is  to  be  subjected  to  a  mechanical  and  one-sided 
169 


NEWER   IDEALS   OF  PEACE 

activity,  and  as  a  highly  subdivided  labor  is  to  be 
demanded  from  him,  it  is  therefore  most  im- 
portant that  he  should  have  his  full  period  of 
childhood  and  youth  for  this  play  expression  in 
order  that  he  may  cultivate  within  himself  the  root 
of  a  culture  which  alone  can  give  his  later  activity 
a  meaning/  This  is  true  whether  or  not  we  ac- 
cept the  theory  that  the  aesthetic  feelings  origi- 
nate in  the  play  impulse,  with  its  corollary  that 
the  constant  experimentation  found  in  the  com- 
monest forms  of  play  are  to  be  looked  upon  as 
"the  principal  ?  ^urce  of  all  kinds  of  art."  At  this 
moment,  when  industrial  forces  are  concentrated 
and  unified  as  never  before,  unusual  care  must  be 
taken  to  secure  to  the  children  their  normal  play 
period,  that  the  art  instinct  may  have  some  chance, 
and  that  the  producer  himself  may  have  enough 
individuality  of  character  to  avoid  becoming  a 
mere  cog  in  the  vast  industrial  machine. 

Quite  aside  also  from  the  problem  of  individual 
development  and  from  the  fact  that  play,  in  which 
the  power  of  choice  is  constantly  presented  and 
constructive  imagination  required,  is  the  best  cor- 
rective of  the  future  disciplinary  life  of  the 
factory,  there  is  another  reason  why  the  children 
who  are  to  become  producers  under  the  present 
system  should  be  given  their  full  child-life  period. 

*The  Play  of  Man,  Groos,  page  394. 

170 


PROTECTION   OF  CHILDREN 


The  entire  population  of  the  factory  town  and 
of  those  enormous  districts  in  every  large  city  in 
which  the  children  live  who  most  need  the  pro- 
tection of  child-labor  legislation,  consists  of  people 
who  have  come  together  in  response  to  the  de- 
mands of  modern  industry.  They  are  held  to- 
gether by  the  purely  impersonal  tie  of  working 
in  one  large  factory,  in  which  they  not  only  do 
not  know  each  other,  but  in  which  no  one  person 
nor  even  group  of  persons  knows  everybody. 
They  are  utterly  without  the  natural  and  minute 
acquaintance  and  inter-family  relationships  that 
rural  and  village  life  afford,  and  are  therefore 
much  more  dependent  upon  the  social  sympathy 
and  power  of  effective  association  which  is  be- 
coming its  urban  substitute. 

This  substitute  can  be  most  easily  elaborated 
among  groups  of  children.  Somewhere  they 
must  learn  to  carry  on  an  orderly  daily  life — that 
life  of  mutual  trust,  forbearance,  and  help  which 
is  the  only  real  life  of  civilized  man.  Play  is  the 
great  social  stimulus,  and  it  is  the  prime  motive 
which  unites  children  and  draws  them  into  com- 
radeship. A  true  democratic  relation  and  ease 
of  acquaintance  is  found  among  the  children  in  a 
typical  factory  community  because  they  more 
readily  overcom.e  differences  of  language,  tradi- 
tion, and  religion  than  do  the  adults.  *Tt  is  in 
171 


NEWER   IDEALS   OF  PEACE 


play  that  nature  reveals  her  anxious  care  to  dis- 
cover men  to  each  other,"  and  this  happy  and  im- 
portant task,  children  unconsciously  carry  for- 
ward day  by  day  with  all  the  excitement  and  joy 
of  co-ordinate  activity.  They  accomplish  that 
which  their  elders  could  not  possibly  do,  and  they 
render  a  most  important  service  to  the  com- 
munity. We  have  not  as  yet  utilized  this  joy  of 
association  in  relation  to  the  system  of  factory 
production  which  is  so  preeminently  one  of  large 
bodies  of  men  working  together  for  hours  at  a 
time.  But  there  is  no  doubt  that  it  would  bring 
a  new  power  into  modern  industry  if  the  factory 
could  avail  iself  of  that  esprit  de  corps,  that  tri- 
umphant buoyancy  which  the  child  experiences 
when  he  feels  his  complete  identification  with  a 
social  group;  that  sense  of  security  which  comes 
upon  him  sitting  in  a  theatre  or  "at  a  party,"  when 
he  issues  forth  from  himself  and  is  lost  in  a  fairy- 
land which  has  been  evoked  not  only  by  his  own 
imagination,  but  by  that  of  his  companions  as 
well.  This  power  of  association,  of  assimilation, 
which  children  possess  in  such  a  high  degree,  is 
easily  carried  over  into  the  affairs  of  youth  if  it 
but  be  given  opportunity  and  freedom  for  action, 
as  it  is  in  the  college  life  of  more  favored  young 
people.  The  esprit  de  corps  of  an  athletic  team, 
that  astonishing  force  of  co-operation,  is,  how- 
172 


PROTECTION   OF  CHILDREN 


ever,  never  consciously  carried  over  into  industry, 
but  is  persistently  disregarded.  It  is,  indeed,  Idst 
before  it  is  discovered — if  I  may  be  permitted  an 
Irish  bull — in  the  case  of  children  who  are  put  to 
work  before  they  have  had  time  to  develop  the 
power  beyond  its  most  childish  and  haphazard 
manifestations. 

Factory  life  depends  upon  groups  of  people 
working  together,  and  yet  it  is  content  with  the 
morphology  of  the  the  group,  as  it  were,  paying  no 
attention  to  its  psychology,  to  the  interaction  of 
its  members.  By  regarding  each  producer  as  a 
solitary  unit,  a  tremendous  power  is  totally 
unutilized.  In  the  case  of  children  who  are  pre- 
maturely put  to  work  under  such  conditions,  an 
unwarranted  nervous  strain  is  added  as  they  make 
their  effort  to  stand  up  to  the  individual  duties 
of  life  while  still  in  the  stage  of  group  and  family 
dependence. 

We  naturally  associate  a  factory  with  orderly 
productive  action;  but  similarity  of  action,  with- 
out identical  thought  and  co-operative  intelligence, 
is  coercion,  and  not  order.  The  present  factory 
discipline  needs  to  be  redeemed  as  the  old  school 
discipline  has  been  redeemed.  In  the  latter  the 
system  of  prizes  and  punishments  has  been  largely 
given  up,  not  only  because  they  were  difficult  to 
173 


NEWER  IDEALS   OF  PEACE 


administer,  but  because  they  utterly  failed  to  free 
the  powers  of  the  child. 

'The  fear  of  starvation/'  of  which  the  old 
economists  made  so  much,  is,  after  all,  but  a  poor 
incentive  to  work;  and  the  appeal  to  cupidity  by 
which  a  man  is  induced  to  "speed  up"  in  all  the 
various  devices  of  piece-work  is  very  little  better. 
Yet  the  factory  still  depends  upon  these  as  incen- 
tives to  the  ordinary  workers.  Certainly  one 
would  wish  to  protect  children  from  them  as 
long  as  possible.  In  a  soap  factory  in  Chicago 
little  girls  wr  bars  of  soap  in  two  covers  at  the 
minimum  rate  of  3,000  bars  a  week;  their  only 
ambition  is  to  wrap  as  fast  as  possible  and  well 
enough  to  pass  the  foreman's  inspection.  The 
girl  whose  earnings  are  the  largest  at  the  end  of 
the  week  is  filled  with  pride — praiseworthy,  cer- 
tainly, but  totally  without  educational  value. 

Let  us  realize  before  it  is  too  late  that  in  this 
age  of  iron,  of  machine-tending,  and  of  sub- 
divided labor,  we  need  as  never  before  the  un- 
trammeled  and  inspired  activity  of  youth.  To 
cut  it  off  from  thousands  of  working  children  is 
a  most  perilous  undertaking,  and  endangers  the 
very  industry  to  which  they  have  been  sacrificed. 

Only  of  late  years  has  an  effort  been  made  by 
the  city  authorities,  by  the  municipality  itself,  to 
conserve  the  play  instinct  and  to  utilize  it,  if  not 
174 


PROTECTION   OF  CHILDREN 


for  the  correction  of  industry,  at  least  for  the 
nurture  of  citizenship.    It  has  been  discovered 
that  the  city  which  is  too  careless  to  provide  play- 
grounds, gymnasiums,  and  athletic  fields  where 
the  boys  legitimately  belong  and  which  the  police- 
man is  bound  to  respect,  simply  puts  a  premium 
on  lawlessness.    Without  these  places  of  their 
own,  groups  of  boys  come  to  look  upon  the  police- 
man as  an  enemy,  and  he  regards  them  as  the 
most  lawless  of  all  the  citizens.    This  is  partly 
due  to  the  fact  that  because  of  our  military  sur- 
vivals the  officer  is  not  brought  in  contact  with 
the  educational  forces  of  the  city,  but  only  with 
its  vices  and  crime.    He  might  have  quite  as 
great  an  opportunity  for  influencing  the  morals 
of  youth  as  the  school  teacher  has.    At  least  one 
American  city  spends  twenty  per  cent,  more  in 
provision  for  the  conviction  of  youths  than  for 
their  education,  for  the  city  which  fails  to  utilize 
this  promising  material  of  youthful  adventure 
does  not  truly  get  rid  of  it,  and  finds  it  more  ex- 
pensive to  care  for  as  waste  material  than  as 
educative  material.    At  a  certain  age  a  boy  is 
possessed  by  a  restless  determination  to  do  some- 
thing   dangerous    and    exciting—a  "difficult 
stunt,"  as  it  were — by  which  he  may  prove  that 
he  is  master  of  his  fate  and  thus  express  his 
growing  self-assertion.    He  prefers  to  demon- 
175 


NEWER   IDEALS   OF  PEACE 


strate  in  feats  requiring  both  courage  and  adroit- 
ness, and  it  may  be  said  that  tradition  is  with  him 
in  his  choice.  That  this  impulse  is  mixed  with 
an  absurd  desire  on  the  part  of  the  boy  to  ''show 
off/'  to  impress  his  companions  with  the  fact  that 
he  is  great  and  brave  and  generally  to  be  ad- 
mired, does  not  in  the  least  affect  its  genuineness. 
The  city  which  fails  to  provide  an  opportunity 
for  this  inevitable  and  normal  desire  on  the  part 
of  the  young  citizens  makes  a  grave  mistake  and 
invites  irregular  expression  of  it.  The  thwarted 
spirit  of  adventure  finds  an  outlet  in  infinite  varie- 
ties of  gambling;  craps,  cards,  the  tossing  of 
discarded  union  buttons,  the  betting  on  odd  or 
even  automobile  numbers,  on  the  number  of 
newspapers  under  a  boy's  arm.  Another  end 
which  can  be  accomplished,  if  the  city  recognizes 
play  as  legitimate  and  provides  playgrounds  and 
athletic  fields,  is  the  development  of  that  self- 
government  and  self-discipline  among  groups 
of  boys,  which  forms  the  most  natural  basis  for 
democratic  political  life  later. 

The  boy  in  a  tenement-house  region  who  does 
not  belong  to  the  gang  is  not  only  an  exception, 
but  a  very  rare  exception.  This  earliest  form  of 
social  life  is  almost  tribal  in  its  organization,  and 
the  leader  too  often  holds  his  place  because  he  is  a 
successful  bully.  The  gang  meets  first  upon  the 
176 


PROTECTION   OF  CHILDREN 


Street,  but  later  it  may  possess  a  club  room  in  a 
stable,  in  a  billiard  room,  in  an  empty  house, 
under  the  viaduct,  in  a  candy  store,  in  a  saloon  or 
even  in  an  empty  lot.    The  spirit  of  association, 
the  fellowship  and  loyalty  which  the  group  in- 
spires, carry  them  into  many  dangers;  but  there 
is  no  doubt  that  it  is  through  these  experiences 
that  the  city  boy  learns  his  political  lessons.  The 
training  for  political  life  is  given  in  these  gangs, 
and  also  an  opportunity  to  develop  that  wonderful 
power  of  adaptation  which  is  the  city's  contribu- 
tion, even  to  the  poorest  of  her  children.  A 
clever  man  once  told  me  that  he  doubted  whether 
an  alderman  could  be  elected  in  a  tenement-house 
district  unless  he  had  had  gang  experience,  and 
had  become  an  adept  in  the  interminable  discus- 
sion which  every  detail  of  the  gang's  activity  re- 
ceives.   This  alone  afifords  a  training  in  demo- 
cratic government,  for  it  is  the  prerogative  of 
democracy  to  invest  political  discussion  with  the 
dignity  of  deeds,  and  to  provide  adequate  motives 
for  discussion.    In  these  social  folk-motes,  so  to 
speak,  the  young  citizen  learns  to  act  upon  his 
own  determination.    The  great  pity  is  that  it  so 
often  results  in  a  group  morality  untouched  by  a 
concern  for  the  larger  morality  of  the  community. 
Normal  groups  reacting  upon  each  other  would 
tend  to  an  equilibrium  of  a  certain  liberty  to  all 
"  177 


NEWER   IDEALS   OF  PEACE 


but  this  cannot  be  accomplished  in  the  Hfe  of  the 
street  where  the  weaker  boy  or  the  weaker  gang 
is  continually  getting  the  worst  of  it.  And  it  is 
only  on  the  protected  playground  that  the  gangs 
can  be  merged  into  baseball  nines  and  similar 
organizations,  governed  by  well-recognized  rules. 

We  have  already  democratized  education  in  the 
interests  of  the  entire  community;  but  recreation 
and  constructive  play,  which  afford  the  best  soil 
for  establishing  genuine  and  democratic  social 
relations,  we  have  left  untouched,  although  they 
are  so  valuable  in  emotional  and  dynamic  power. 
Further  than  that,  the  city  that  refrains  from 
educating  the  play  motive  is  obliged  to  suppress 
it.  In  Chicago  gangs  of  boys  between  fourteen 
and  sixteen  years  of  age,  who,  possessing  work- 
certificates  are  outside  of  the  jurisdiction  of  the 
truant  officer,  are  continually  being  arrested  by 
the  police,  since  they  have  no  orderly  opportunity 
for  recreation.  An  enlightened  city  government 
would  regard  these  groups  of  boys  as  the  natural 
soil  in  which  to  sow  the  seeds  of  self-government. 
As  every  European  city  has  its  parade-ground, 
where  the  mimics  of  war  are  faithfully  rehearsed, 
in  order  that  the  country  may  be  saved  in  times 
of  danger,  so,  if  modern  government  were  as 
really  concerned  in  developing  its  citizens  as  it  is 
in  defending  them,  we  would  look  upon  every 
178 


PROTECTION   OF  CHILDREN 

playing-field  as  the  training-place  and  parade- 
ground  of  mature  citizenship. 

Frederick  the  Great  discovered  and  applied  the 
use  of  the  rhythmic  step  for  the  marching  of  sol- 
diers. For  generations  men  had  gone  forth  to 
war,  using  martial  music  as  they  had  used  the 
battle-cry,  merely  to  incite  their  courage  and  war 
spirit ;  but  the  music  had  had  nothing  to  do  with 
their  actual  marching.  The  use  of  it  as  a  prac- 
tical measure  enormously  increased  the  endurance 
of  the  soldiers  and  raised  the  records  of  forced 
marches.  Industry  at  the  present  moment,  as 
represented  by  masses  of  men  in  the  large  fac- 
tories, is  quite  as  chaotic  as  the  early  armies  were. 
We  have  failed  to  apply  our  education  to  the  real 
life  of  the  average  factory  producer.  He  works 
without  any  inner  coherence  or  sense  of  comrade- 
ship. Our  public  education  has  done  little  as  yet 
to  release  his  powers  or  to  cheer  him  with  the 
knowledge  of  his  significance  to  the  State. 


179 


CHAPTER  VII 


UTILIZATION  OF  WOMEN  IN  CITY 
GOVERNMENT 

We  are  told  many  times  that  the  industrial  city 
is  a  new  thing  upon  the  face  of  the  earth,  and 
that  everywhere  its  growth  has  been  phenomenal, 
whether  we  look  at  Moscow,  Berlin,  Paris,  New 
York,  or  Chicago.  With  or  without  the  medi- 
aeval foundation,  modern  cities  are  merely  result- 
ants of  the  vast  crowds  of  people  who  have 
collected  at  certain  points  which  have  become 
manufacturing  and  distributing  centres. 

For  all  political  purposes,  however,  the  indus- 
trial origin  of  the  city  is  entirely  ignored,  and 
political  life  is  organized  exclusively  in  relation 
to  its  earlier  foundations. 

As  the  city  itself  originated  for  the  common 
protection  of  the  people  and  was  built  about  a 
suitable  centre  of  defense  which  formed  a  citadel, 
such  as  the  Acropolis  at  Athens  or  the  Kremlin 
at  Moscow,  so  we  can  trace  the  beginning  of  the 
municipal  franchise  to  the  time  when  the  prob- 
lems of  municipal  government  were  still  largely 
i8o 


WOMEN   IN  GOVERNMENT 

those  of  protecting  the  city  against  rebelHon  from 
within  and  against  invasion  from  without.  A 
voice  in  city  government,  as  it  was  extended  from 
the  nobles,  who  alone  bore  arms,  was  naturally 
given  solely  to  those  who  were  valuable  to  the 
military  system.  There  was  a  certain  logic  in 
giving  the  franchise  only  to  grown  men  when 
the  existence  and  stability  of  the  city  depended 
upon  their  defence,  and  when  the  ultimate  value 
of  the  elector  could  be  reduced  to  his  ability  to 
perform  military  duty.  It  was  fair  that  only 
those  who  were  liable  to  a  sudden  call  to  arms 
should  be  selected  to  decide  as  to  the  relations 
which  the  city  should  bear  to  rival  cities,  and  that 
the  vote  for  war  should  be  cast  by  the  same  men 
who  would  bear  the  brunt  of  battle  and  the  burden 
of  protection.  We  are  told  by  historians  that  the 
citizens  were  first  called  together  in  those  assem- 
blages which  were  the  beginning  of  popular 
government,  only  if  a  war  was  to  be  declared  or 
an  expedition  to  be  undertaken. 

But  rival  cities  have  long  since  ceased  to  settle 
their  claims  by  force  of  arms,  and  we  shall  have 
to  admit,  I  think,  that  this  early  test  of  the  elector 
is  no  longer  fitted  to  the  modern  city,  whatever 
may  be  true,  in  the  last  analysis,  of  the  basis  for 
the  Federal  Government. 

It  has  been  well  said  that  the  modern  city  is  a 
i8i 


NEWER   IDEALS   OF  PEACE 


Stronghold  of  industrialism,  quite  as  the  feudal 
city  was  a  stronghold  of  militarism,  but  the 
modern  city  fears  no  enemies,  and  rivals  from 
without  and"  its  problems  of  government  are 
solely  internal.  Affairs  for  the  most  part  are 
going  badly  in  these  great  new  centres  in  which 
the  quickly  congregated  population  has  not  yet 
learned  to  arrange  its  affairs  satisfactorily.  In- 
sanitary housing,  poisonous  sewage,  contami- 
nated water,  infant  mortality,  the  spread  of  con^ 
tagion,  adulterated  food,  impure  milk,  smoke- 
laden  air,  ill-ventilated  factories,  dangerous  oc- 
cupations, juvenile  crime,  unwholesome  crowd- 
ing, prostitution,  and  drunkenness  are  the  enemies 
which  the  modern  city  must  face  and  overcome 
would  it  survive.  Logically,  its  electorate  should 
be  made  up  of  those  who  can  bear  a  valiant  part 
in  this  arduous  contest,  of  those  who  in  the  past 
have  at  least  attempted  to  care  for  children,  to 
clean  houses,  to  prepare  foods,  to  isolate  the 
family  from  moral  dangers,  of  those  who  have 
traditionally  taken  care  of  that  side  of  life  which, 
as  soon  as  the  population  is  congested,  inevitably 
becomes  the  subject  of  municipal  consideration 
and  control. 

To  test  the  elector's  fitness  to  deal  with  this 
situation  by  his  ability  to  bear  arms,  is  absurd. 
A  city  is  in  many  respects  a  great  business  cor- 
182 


WOMEN   IN  GOVERNMENT 


poration,  but  in  other  respects  it  is  enlarged 
housekeeping.  If  American  cities  have  failed  in 
the  first,  partly  because  office  holders  have  carried 
with  them  the  predatory  instinct  learned  in  com- 
petitive business,  and  cannot  help  "working  a 
good  thing''  when  they  have  an  opportunity,  may 
we  not  say  that  city  housekeeping  has  failed  part- 
ly because  women,  the  traditional  housekeepers, 
have  not  been  consulted  as  to  its  multiform  activ- 
ities? The  men  of  the  city  have  been  carelessly 
indiiferent  to  much  of  this  civic  housekeeping,  as 
they  have  always  been  indifferent  to  the  details 
of  the  household.  They  nave  totally  disregarded 
a  candidate's  capacity  to  keep  the  streets  clean, 
preferring  to  consider  him  in  relation  to  the 
national  tariff  or  to  the  necessity  for  increasing 
the  national  navy,  in  a  pure  spirit  of  reversion  to 
the  traditional  type  of  government  which  had  to 
do  only  with  enemies  and  outsiders. 

It  is  difficult  to  see  what  military  prowess  has 
to  do  with  the  multiform  duties,  which,  in  a 
modern  city,  include  the  care  of  parks  and  libra- 
ries, superintendence  of  markets,  sewers,  and 
bridges,  the  inspection  of  provisions  and  boilers, 
and  the  proper  disposal  of  garbage.  Military 
prowess  has  nothing  to  do  with  the  building  de- 
partment which  the  city  maintains  to  see  to  it  that 
the  basements  be  dry,  that  the  bedrooms  be  large 
183 


NEWER   IDEALS  OF  PEACE 


enough  to  afford  the  required  cubic  feet  of  air, 
that  the  plumbing  be  sanitary,  that  the  gas-pipes 
do  not  leak,  that  the  tenement-house  court  be 
large  enough  to  afford  light  and  ventilation,  and 
that  the  stairways  be  fireproof.  The  ability  to 
carry  arms  has  nothing  to  do  with  the  health  de- 
partment maintained  by  the  city,  which  provides 
that  children  be  vaccinated,  that  contagious 
diseases  be  isolated  and  placarded,  that  the  spread 
of  tuberculosis  be  curbed,  and  that  the  water  be 
free  from  typhoid  infection.  Certainly  the  mil- 
itary conception  of  society  is  remote  from  the 
functions  of  the  school  boards,  whose  concern  it 
is  that  children  be  educated,  that  they  be  supplied 
with  kindergartens  and  be  given  a  decent  place  in 
which  to  play.  The  very  multifariousness  and 
complexity  of  a  city  government  demands  the 
help  of  minds  accustomed  to  detail  and  variety  • 
of  work,  to  a  sense  of  obligation  for  the  health 
and  welfare  of  young  children,  and  to  a  responsi-  ^ 
bility  for  the  cleanliness  and  comfort  of  others. 

Because  all  these  things  have  traditionally  been 
in  the  hands  of  women,  if  they  take  no  part  in 
them  now,  they  are  not  only  missing  the  education 
which  the  natural  participation  in  civic  life  would 
bring  to  them,  but  they  are  losing  what  they  have 
always  had.  From  the  beginning  of  tribal  life 
women  have  been  held  responsible  for  the  health 
184 


WOMEN   IN  GOVERNMENT 


of  the  community,  a  function  which  is  now  repre- 
sented by  the  health  department;  from  the  days 
of  the  cave  dwellers,  so  far  as  the  home  was  clean 
and  wholesome,  it  was  due  to  their  efforts,  which 
are  now  represented  by  the  bureau  of  tenement- 
house  inspection;  from  the  period  of  the  primi- 
tive village,  the  only  public  sweeping  performed 
was  what  they  undertook  in  their  own  dooryards, 
that  which  is  now  represented  by  the  bureau  of 
street  cleaning.  Most  of  the  departments  in  a 
modern  city  can  be  traced  to  woman's  traditional 
activity,  but  in  spite  of  this,  so  soon  as  these  old 
affairs  were  turned  over  to  the  care  of  the  city, 
they  slipped  from  woman's  hands,  apparently  be- 
cause they  then  became  matters  for  collective  ac- 
tion and  implied  the  use  of  the  franchise.  Be- 
cause the  franchise  had  in  the  first  instance  been 
given  to  the  man  who  could  fight,  because  in  the 
beginning  he  alone  could  vote  who  could  carry  a 
weapon,  the  franchise  was  considered  an  improper 
thing  for  a  woman  to  possess. 

Is  it  quite  public  spirited  for  women  to  say, 
"We  will  take  care  of  these  affairs  so  long  as 
they  stay  in  our  own  houses,  but  if  they  go  out- 
side and  concern  so  many  people  that  they  cannot 
be  carried  on  without  the  mechanism  of  the  vote, 
we  will  drop  them.  It  is  true  that  these  activities 
which  women  have  always  had,  are  not  at  present 
185 


NEWER   IDEALS   OF  PEACE 


being  carried  on  very  well  by  the  men  in  most  of 
the  great  American  cities,  but  because  we  do  not 
consider  it  'ladylike'  to  vote  shall  we  ignore  their 
failure"? 

Because  women  consider  the  government 
men's  affair  and  something  which  concerns  itself 
with  elections  and  alarms,  they  have  become  so 
confused  in  regard  to  their  traditional  business  in 
life,  the  rearing  of  children,  that  they  hear  with 
complacency  a  statement  made  by  the  Nestor  of 
sanitary  reformers,  that  one-half  of  the  tiny  lives 
which  make  up  the  city's  death  rate  each  year 
might  be  saved  by  a  more  thorough  application 
of  sanitary  science.  Because  it  implies  the  use 
of  the  suffrage,  they  do  not  consider  it  women's 
business  to  save  these  lives.  Are  we  going  to 
lose  ourselves  in  the  old  circle  of  convention  and 
add  to  that  sum  of  wrong-doing  which  is  con- 
tinually committed  in  the  world  because  we  do 
not  look  at  things  as  they  really  are?  Old-fash- 
ioned ways  which  no  longer  apply  to  changed 
conditions  are  a  snare  in  which  the  feet  of  women 
have  always  become  readily  entangled.  It  is  so 
easy  to  believe  that  things  that  used  to  exist  still 
go  on  long  after  they  are  passed ;  it  is  so  easy  to 
commit  irreparable  blunders  because  we  fail  to 
correct  our  theories  by  our  changing  experience. 
So  many  of  the  stumbling-blocks  against  which 
i86 


WOMEN   IN  GOVERNMENT 


we  fall  are  the  opportunities  to  which  we  have  not 
adjusted  ourselves.  Because  it  shocks  an  obsolete 
ideal,  we  keep  hold  of  a  convention  which  no 
longer  squares  with  our  genuine  insight,  and  we 
are  slow  to  follow  a  clue  which  might  enable  us  to 
solace  and  improve  the  life  about  us. 

Why  is  it  that  women  do  not  vote  upon  the 
matters  which  concern  them  so  intimately?  Why 
do  they  not  follow  these  vital  affairs  and  feel 
responsible  for  their  proper  administration,  even 
though  they  have  become  municipalized?  What 
would  the  result  have  been  could  women  have  re- 
garded the  suffrage,  not  as  a  right  or  a  privilege, 
but  as  a  mere  piece  of  governmental  machinery 
without  which  they  could  not  perform  their 
traditional  functions  under  the  changed  condi- 
tions of  city  life?  Could  we  view  the  whole 
situation  as  a  matter  of  obligation  and  of  normal 
development,  it  would  be  much  simplified.  We 
are  at  the  beginning  of  a  prolonged  effort  to  in- 
corporate a  progressive  developing  life  founded 
upon  a  response  to  the  needs  of  all  the  people, 
into  the  requisite  legal  enactments  and  civic  insti- 
tutions. To  be  in  any  measure  successful,  this 
effort  will  require  all  the  intelligent  powers  of 
observation,  all  the  sympathy,  all  the  common 
sense  which  may  be  gained  from  the  whole  adult 
population. 

187 


NEWER   IDEALS   OF  PEACE 

The  Statement  is  sometimes  made  that  the 
franchise  for  women  would  be  valuable  only  so 
far  as  the  educated  women  exercised  it.  This 
statement  totally  disregards  the  fact  that  those 
matters  in  which  woman's  judgment  is  most 

\ needed  are  far  too  primitive  and  basic  to  be  large- 
ly influenced  by  what  we  call  education.  The 
sanitary  condition  of  all  the  factories  and  work- 
shops, for  instance,  in  which  the  industrial 
processes  are  at  present  carried  on  in  great  cities, 
intimately  affect  the  health  and  lives  of  thousands 
of  workingwomen. 

It  is  questionable  whether  women  to-day,  in 
spite  of  the  fact  that  there  are  myriads  of  them 
in  factories  and  shops,  are  doing  their  full  share 
of  the  world's  work  in  the  lines  of  production 
which  have  always  been  theirs.  Even  two  cen- 
turies ago  they  did  practically  all  the  spinning, 
dyeing,  weaving,  and  sewing.  They  carried  on 
much  of  the  brewing  and  baking  and  thousands 
of  operations  which  have  been  pushed  out  of  the 
domestic  system  into  the  factory  system.  But 
simply  to  keep  on  doing  the  work  which  their 
grandmothers  did,  was  to  find  themselves  sur- 
rounded by  conditions  over  which  they  have  no 
control. 

Sometimes  when  I  see  dozens  of  young  girls 
going  into  the  factories  of  a  certain  biscuit  com- 
i88 


WOMEN   IN  GOVERNMENT 


pany  on  the  West  Side  of  Chicago,  they  appear 
for  the  moment  as  a  mere  cross-section  in  the 
long  procession  of  women  who  have  furnished 
the  breadstuffs  from  time  immemorial,  from  the 
savage  woman  who  ground  the  meal  and  baked 
a  flat  cake,  through  innumerable  cottage  hearths, 
kitchens,  and  bake  ovens,  to  this  huge  concern 
in  which  they  are  still  carrying  on  their  tradi- 
tional business.  But  always  before,  during  the 
ages  of  this  unending  procession,  women  them- 
selves were  able  to  dictate  concerning  the  hours 
and  the  immediate  conditions  of  their  work; 
even  grinding  the  meal  and  baking  the  cake  in 
the  ashes  was  diversified  by  many  other  activi- 
ties. But  suddenly,  since  the  appHcation  of  steam 
to  the  processes  of  kneading  bread  and  of  turn- 
ing the  spindle,  which  really  means  only  a  differ- 
ent motor  power  and  not  in  the  least  an  essential 
change  in  her  work,  she  has  been  denied  the  priv- 
ilege of  regulating  the  conditions  which  imme- 
diately surround  her. 

In  the  census  of  1900,  the  section  on  "Occupa- 
tions" shows  very  clearly  in  what  direction  the 
employment  of  women  has  been  tending  during 
the  last  twenty  years.  Two  striking  facts  stand 
out  vividly:  first,  the  increase  in  the  percentage 
of  workingwomen  over  the  percentage  of  men, 
and  second,  the  large  percentage  of  young  women 
189 


NEWER   IDEALS   OF  PEACE 

between  sixteen  and  twenty  years  old  in  the  total 
number  of  workingwomen  as  compared  with  the 
small  percentage  of  young  men  of  the  same  ages 
in  the  total  number  of  workingmen.  Practically 
one-half  of  the  workingwomen  in  the  United 
States  are  girls — young  women  under  the  age  of 
twenty-five  years.  This  increase  in  the  number 
of  young  girls  in  industry  is  the  more  striking 
when  taken  in  connection  with  the  fact  that  in- 
dustries of  to-day  differ  most  markedly  from 
those  of  the  past  in  the  relentless  speed  which 
they  require.  This  increase  in  speed  is  as  marked 
in  the  depths  of  sweat-shop  labor  as  in  the  most 
advanced  New  England  mills,  where  the  eight 
looms  operated  by  each  worker  have  increased 
to  twelve,  fourteen,  and  even  sixteen  looms. 
This  speed,  of  course,  brings  a  new  strain  into 
industry  and  tends  inevitably  to  nervous  exhaus- 
tion. Machines  may  be  revolved  more  and  more 
swiftly,  but  the  girl  workers  have  no  increase 
in  vitality  responding  to  the  heightened  pressure. 
An  ampler  and  more  far-reaching  protection  than 
now  exists,  is  needed  in  order  to  care  for  the 
health  and  safety  of  women  in  industry.  Their 
youth,  their  helplessness,  their  increasing  num- 
bers, the  conditions  under  which  they  are  em- 
ployed, all  call  for  uniform  and  enforceable  stat- 
utes. The  elaborate  regulations  of  dangerous 
190 


WOMEN   IN  GOVERNMENT 


trades,  enacted  in  England  and  on  the  Continent 
for  both  adults  and  children,  find  no  parallel  in 
the  United  States.  The  injurious  effects  of  em- 
ployments involving  the  use  of  poisons,  acids, 
gases,  atmospheric  extremes,  or  other  dangerous 
processes,  still  await  adequate  investigation  and 
legislation  in  this  country.  How  shall  this  take 
place,  save  by  the  concerted  efforts  of  the  women 
themselves,  those  who  are  employed,  and  those 
other  women  who  are  intelligent  as  to  the  work- 
er's needs  and  who  possess  a  conscience  in  regard 
to  industrial  affairs  ? 

It  is  legitimate  and  necessary  that  women 
should  make  a  study  of  certain  trades  and  occu- 
pations. The  production  of  sweated  goods,  from 
the  human  point  of  view,  is  not  production  at  all, 
but  waste.  If  the  employer  takes  from  the  work- 
ers week  by  week  more  than  his  wages  restore  to 
them,  he  gradually  reduces  them  to  the  state  of 
industrial  parasites.  The  wages  of  the  sweated 
worker  are  either  being  supplemented  by  the 
wages  of  relatives  and  the  gifts  of  charitable  as- 
sociations, or  else  her  standard  of  living  is  so  low 
that  she  is  continually  losing  her  vitality  and  tend- 
ing to  become  a  charge  upon  the  community  in  a 
hospital  or  a  poorhouse.  ^ 

Yet  even  the  sweat-shops,  in  which  woman  car- 

^  A  Case  for  the  Factory  Acts.    Mrs.  Sidney  Webb. 


NEWER  IDEALS  OF  PEACE 

ries  on  her  old  business  of  making  clothing,  had 
to  be  redeemed,  so  far  as  they  have  been  redeemed, 
by  the  votes  of  men  who  passed  an  anti-sweat- 
shop law;  by  the  city  fathers,  who,  after  much 
pleading,  were  induced  to  order  an  inspection  of 
sweat-shops  that  they  might  be  made  to  comply 
with  sanitary  regulations.    Women  directly  con- 
trolled the  surroundings  of  their  work  as  long  as 
their  arrangements  were  domestic,|but  they  can- 
not do  this  now  unless  they  have  the  franchise,  as 
yet  the  only  mechanism  devised  by  which  a  city 
selects  its  representative  and  by  which  a  number 
of  persons  are  able  to  embody  their  collective  will 
in  legislation.    For  a  hundred  years  England  has 
been  legislating  upon  the  subject  of  insanity  woric- 
shops,  long  and  exhausting  hours  of  work,  night 
work  for  women,  occupations  in  which  pregnant 
women  may  be  employed,  and  hundreds  of  other 
restrictions  which  we  are  only  beginning  to  con- 
sider objects  of  legislation  here. 

So  far  as  women  have  been  able,  in  Chicago  at 
least,  to  help  the  poorest  workers  in  the  sweat- 
shops, it  has  been  accomplished  by  women  organ- 
ized into  trades  unions.  The  organization  of 
Special  Order  Tailors  found  that  it  was  compar- 
atively simple  for  an  employer  to  give  the  skilled 
operatives  in  a  clothing  factory  more  money  by 
taking  it  away  from  the  wages  of  the  seam-sewer 


WOMEN   IN  GOVERNMENT 


and  button-holer.   The  fact  that  it  resulted  in  one 
set  of  workers  being  helped  at  the  expense  of 
another  set  did  not  appeal  to  him,  so  long  as  he 
was  satisfying  the  demand  of  the  union  without 
increasing  the  total  cost  of  production.    But  the 
Special  Order  Tailors,  at  the  sacrifice  of  their  own 
wages  and  growth,  made  a  determined  effort  to 
include  even  the  sweat-shop  workers  in  the  bene- 
fits they  had  slowly  secured  for  themselves.  By 
means  of  the  use  of  the  label  they  were  finally 
able  to  insist  that  no  goods  should  be  given  out 
for  home-finishing  save  to  women  presenting 
union  cards,  and  they  raised  the  wages  from  nine 
and  eleven  cents  a  dozen  for  finishing  garments,  to 
the  minimum  wage  of  fifteen  cents.  They  also  made 
a  protest  against  the  excessive  subdivision  of  the 
labor  upon  garments,  a  practice  which  enables  the 
manufacturer  to  use  children  and  the  least  skilled 
adults.    Thirty-two  persons  are  commonly  em- 
ployed upon  a  single  coat,  and  it  is  the  purpose 
of  the  Special  Order  Tailors  to  have  all  the 
machine  work  performed  by  one  worker,  thus 
reducing  the  number  working  on  one  coat  to 
twelve  or  fourteen.    As  this  change  will  at  the 
same  time  demand  more  skill  on  the  part  of  the 
operator,  and  will  increase  the  variety  and  in- 
terest in  his  work,  these  garment-makers  are  sac- 
rificing both  time  and  money  for  the  defence  of 
13  193 


NEWER   IDEALS   OF  PEACE 


Ruskinian  principles — one  of  the  few  actual  at- 
tempts to  recover  the  ''joy  of  work.''  Although 
the  attempt  was,  of  course,  mixed  with  a  desire 
to  preserve  a  trade  from  the  invasion  of  the  un- 
skilled, and  a  consequent  lowering  of  wages,  it 
also  represented  a  genuine  effort  to  preserve  to 
the  poorest  worker  some  interest  and  value  in  the 
work  inself.  It  is  most  unfair,  however,  to  put 
this  task  upon  the  trades  unionists  and  to  so  con- 
fuse it  with  their  other  efforts  that  it,  too,  be- 
comes a  cause  of  warfare.  The  poorest  women 
are  often  but  uncomprehending  victims  of  this 
labor  movement  of  which  they  understand  so 
little,  and  which  has  become  so  much  a  matter  of 
battle  that  helpless  individuals  are  lost  in  the 
conflict. 

A  complicated  situation  occurs  to  me  in  illus- 
tration. A  woman  from  the  Hull-House  Day 
Nursery  came  to  me  two  years  ago  asking  to 
borrow  twenty-five  dollars,  a  sum  her  union  had 
imposed  as  a  fine.  She  gave  such  an  incoher- 
ent account  of  her  plight  that  it  was  evident  that 
she  did  not  in  the  least  understand  what  it  was 
all  about.  A  little  investigation  disclosed  the 
following  facts:  The  "Nursery  Mother,"  as  I 
here  call  her  for  purposes  of  identification,  had 
worked  for  a  long  time  in  an  unorganized  over- 
all factory,  where  the  proprietor,  dealing  as  he 
194 


WOMEN   IN  GOVERNMENT 


did  in  goods  purchased  exclusively  by  working- 
men,  found  it  increasingly  difficult  to  sell  his 
overalls  because  they  did  not  bear  the  union  label. 
He  finally  made  a  request  to  the  union  that  the 
employees  in  his  factory  be  organized.  This  was 
done,  he  was  given  the  use  of  the  label,  and  upon 
this  basis  he  prospered  for  several  months. 

Whether  the  organizer  was  "fixed"  or  not,  the 
investigation  did  not  make  clear;  for,  although 
the  "Nursery  Mother,"  with  her  fellow-workers, 
had  paid  their  union  dues  regularly,  the  employer 
was  not  compelled  to  pay  the  union  scale  of 
wages,  but  continued  to  pay  the  same  wages 
as  before.    At  the  end  of  three  months  his  em- 
ployees discovered  that  they  were  not  being  paid 
the  union  scale,  and  demanded  that  their  wages 
be  raised  to  that  amount.    The  employer,  in  the 
meantime  having  extensively  advertised  his  use 
of  the  label,  concluded  that  his  purpose  had  been 
served,  and  that  he  no  longer  needed  the  union. 
He  refused,  therefore,  to  pay  the  union  scale,  and 
a  strike  ensued.    The  "Nursery  Mother"  went 
out  with  the  rest,  and  within  a  few  days  found 
work  in  another  shop,  a  union  shop  doing  a  lower 
grade  of  manufacturing.    At  that  time  there  was 
no  uniform  scale  in  the  garment  trades,  and  al- 
though a  trade  unionist  working  for  union  wa- 
ges, she  received  lower  wages  than  she  had  under 
195 


NEWER   IDEALS   OF  PEACE 

the  non-union  conditions  in  the  overall  factory. 
She  was  naturally  much  confused  and,  following 
her  instinct  to  get  the  best  wages  possible,  she 
went  back  to  her  old  place.  Affairs  ran  smooth- 
ly for  a  few  weeks,  until  the  employer  discovered 
that  he  was  again  losing  trade  because  his  goods 
lacked  the  label,  whereupon  he  once  more  applied 
to  have  his  shop  unionized.  The  organizer,  com- 
ing back,  promptly  discovered  the  recreant  ''Nurs- 
ery Mother,"  and,  much  to  her  bewilderment,  she 
was  fined  twenty-five  dollars.  She  understood 
nothing  clearly,  nor  could  she,  indeed,  be  made  to 
understand  so  long  as  she  was  in  the  midst  of  this 
petty  warfare.  Her  labor  was  a  mere  method  of 
earning  money  quite  detached  from  her  European 
experience,  and  failed  to  make  for  her  the  remo- 
test connection  with  the  community  whose  genu- 
ine needs  she  was  supplying.  No  effort  had  been 
made  to  show  her  the  cultural  aspect  of  her  work, 
to  give  her  even  the  feeblest  understanding  of  the 
fact  that  she  was  supplying  a  genuine  need  of 
the  community,  and  that  she  was  entitled  to 
respect  and  a  legitimate  industrial  position.  It 
would  have  been  necessary  to  make  such  an  effort 
from  the  historic  standpoint,  and  this  could  be 
undertaken  only  by  the  community  as  a  whole  and 
not  by  any  one  class  in  it.  Protective  legislation 
would  be  but  the  first  step  toward  making  her  a 
196 


WOMEN   IN  GOVERNMENT 


"more  valuable  producer  and  a  more  intelligent 
citizen.  The  whole  effort  would  imply  a  closer 
connection  between  industry  and  government, 
and  could  be  accomplished  intelligently  only  if 
women  were  permitted  to  exercise  the  franchise. 

A  certain  healing  and  correction  would  doubt- 
less ensue  could  we  but  secure  for  the  protection 
and  education  of  industrial  workers  that  nurture 
of  health  and  morals  which  women  have  so  long 
reserved  for  their  own  families  and  which  has 
never  been  utilized  as  a  directing  force  in  in- 
dustrial affairs. 

When  the  family  constituted  the  industrial 
organism  of  the  day,  the  daughters  of  the  house- 
hold were  carefully  taught  in  reference  to  the 
place  they  would  take  in  that  organism,  but  as 
the  household  arts  have  gone  outside  the  home, 
almost  nothing  has  been  done  to  connect  the 
young  women  with  the  present  great  industrial 
system.  This  neglect  has  been  equally  true  in  re- 
gard  to  the  technical  and  cultural  sides  of  that 
system. 

The  failure  to  fit  the  education  of  women  to 
the  actual  industrial  life  which  is  carried  on  about 
them  has  had  disastrous  results  in  two  direc- 
tions. First,  industry  itself  has  lacked  the  mod- 
ification which  women  might  have  brought  to  it 
had  they  committed  the  entire  movement  to  that 
197 


NEWER   IDEALS   OF  PEACE 


growing  concern  for  a  larger  and  more  satisfying 
life  for  each  member  of  the  community,  a  concern 
which  we  have  come  to  regard  as  legitimate. 
Second,  the  more  prosperous  women  would 
have  been  able  to  understand  and  adjust  their 
own  difficulties  of  household  management  in  re- 
lation to  the  producer  of  factory  products,  as  they 
are  now  utterly  unable  to  do. 

As  the  census  of  1900  showed  that  more  than 
half  of  the  women  employed  in  ''gainful  occupa- 
tions'' in  the  United  States  are  engaged  in  house- 
holds, certainly  their  conditions  of  labor  lie 
largely  in  the  hands  of  women  employers.  At 
a  conference  held  at  Lake  Placid  by  employers 
of  household  labor,  it  was  contended  that  future 
historical  review  may  show  that  the  girls  who 
are  to-day  in  domestic  service  are  the  really 
progressive  women  of  the  age ;  that  they  are  those 
who  are  fighting  conditions  which  limit  their 
freedom,  and  although  they  are  doing  it  blindly, 
at  least  they  are  demanding  avenues  of  self-ex- 
pression outside  their  work ;  and  that  this  struggle 
from  conditions  detrimental  to  their  highest  life 
is  the  ever-recurring  story  of  the  emancipation  of 
first  one  class  and  then  another.  It  was  further 
contended  that  in  this  effort  to  become  sufficient- 
ly educated  to  be  able  to  understand  the  needs  of 
an  educated  employer  from  an  independent  stand- 
198 


WOMEN   IN  GOVERNMENT 


point,  they  are  really  doing  the  community  a 
great  service,  and  did  they  but  receive  co-opera- 
tion instead  of  opposition,  domestic  service  would 
lose  its  social  ostracism  and  attract  a  more  intel- 
ligent class  of  women.  And  yet  this  effort,  per- 
fectly reasonable  from  the  standpoint  of  historic 
development  and  democratic  tradition,  receives 
little  help  from  the  employing  housekeepers,  be- 
cause they  know  nothing  of  industrial  develop- 
ment. 

The  situation  could  be  understood  only  by 
viewing  it,  first,  in  the  relation  to  recent  immi- 
gration and,  second,  in  connection  with  the 
factory  system  at  the  present  stage  of  develop- 
ment in  America.  A  review  of  the  history  of 
domestic  service  in  a  fairly  prosperous  American 
family  begins  with  the  colonial  period,  when  the 
daughters  of  the  neighboring  farmers  came  in  to 
''help"  during  the  busy  season.  This  was  fol- 
lowed by  the  Irish  immigrant,  when  almost  every 
kitchen  had  its  Nora  or  Bridget,  while  the  mis- 
tress of  the  household  retained  the  sweeping  and 
dusting  and  the  Saturday  baking.  Then  came 
the  halcyon  days  of  German  ''second  girls"  and 
cooks,  followed  by  the  Swedes.  The  successive 
waves  of  immigration  supply  the  demand  for 
domestic  service,  gradually  obliterating  the  fact 
that  as  the  women  became  more  familiar  with 
199 


NEWER   IDEALS   OF  PEACE 

American  customs,  they  as  well  as  their  men  folk, 
entered  into  more  skilled  and  lucrative  positions. 

In  these  last  years  immigration  consists  in 
ever-increasing  numbers  of  South  Italians  and 
of  Russian,  Polish,  and  Rumanian  Jews,  none 
of  whom  have  to  any  appreciable  extent  entered 
into  domestic  service.  The  Italian  girls  are  mar- 
ried between  the  ages  of  fifteen  and  eighteen,  and 
to  live  in  any  house  in  town  other  than  that  of 
her  father  seems  to  an  Italian  girl  quite  incompre- 
hensible. The  strength  of  the  family  tie,  the 
need  for  ''kosher"  foods,  the  celebration  of  re- 
ligious festivities,  the  readiness  with  which  she 
takes  up  the  sewing  trades  in  which  her  father  and 
brother  are  already  largely  engaged,  makes  do- 
mestic service  a  rare  occupation  for  the  daughters 
of  the  recent  Jewish  immigrants.  Moreover, 
these  two  classes  of  immigrants  have  been  quickly 
absorbed,  as,  indeed,  all  working  people  are,  by 
the  increasing  demand  for  the  labor  of  young  girls 
and  children  in  factory  and  workshops.  IThe  pau- 
city of  the  material  for  domestic  service  is  there- 
fore revealed  at  last,  and  we  are  obliged  to  con- 
sider the  material  for  domestic  service  which  a 
democracy  supplies,  and  also  to  realize  that  the 
administration  of  the  household  has  suffered  be- 
cause it  has  become  unnaturally  isolated  from  the 
rest  of  the  community. 

2CX) 


WOMEN   IN  GOVERNMENT 


The  problems  of  food  and  shelter  for  the 
family,  at  any  given  moment,  must  be  considered 
in  relation  to  all  the  other  mechanical  and  in- 
dustrial life  of  that  moment,  quite  as  the  intel- 
lectual life  of  the  family  finally  depends  for  its 
vitality  upon  its  relation  to  the  intellectual  re- 
sources of  the  rest  of  the  community.  When 
the  administrator  of  the  household  deliberately 
refuses  to  avail  herself  of  the  wonderful  inven- 
tions going  on  all  about  her,  she  soon  comes  to 
the  point  of  priding  herself  upon  the  fact  that 
her  household  is  administered  according  to  tra- 
ditional lines  and  of  believing  that  the  moral  life 
of  the  family  is  so  enwrapped  in  these  old  customs 
as  to  be  endangered  by  any  radical  change.  Be- 
cause of  this  attitude  on  the  part  of  contemporary 
housekeepers,  the  household  has  firmly  withstood 
the  beneficent  changes  and  healing  innovations 
which  applied  science  and  economics  would  long 
ago  have  brought  about  could  they  have  worked 
naturally  and  unimpeded. 

These  moral  and  economic  difficulties,  whether 
connected  with  the  isolation  of  the  home  or  with 
the  partial  and  unsatisfactory  efforts  of  trades 
unions,  could  be  avoided  only  if  society  would 
frankly  recognize  the  industrial  situation  as  that 
which  concerns  us  all,  and  would  seriously  pre- 
pare all  classes  of  the  community  for  their  -rela- 

201 


NEWER   IDEALS   OF  PEACE 

tion  to  the  situation.  A  technical  preparation 
would,  of  course,  not  be  feasible,  but  a  cultural 
one  would  be  possible,  so  that  all  parts  of  the  com- 
munity might  be  intelligent  in  regard  to  the  in- 
dustrial developments  and  transitions  going  on 
about  them.  If  American  women  could  but  ob- 
tain a  liberating  knowledge  of  that  history  of  in- 
dustry and  commerce  which  is  so  similar  in  every 
country  of  the  globe,  the  fact  that  so  much  fac- 
tory labor  is  performed  by  immigrants  would 
help  to  bring  them  nearer  to  the  immigrant  wo- 
man. Equipped  with  ''the  informing  mind''  on 
the  one  hand  and  with  experience  on  the  other,  we 
could  then  walk  together  through  the  marvelous 
streets  of  the  human  city,  no  longer  conscious 
whether  we  are  natives  or  aliens,  because  we  have 
become  absorbed  in  a  fraternal  relation  arising 
from  a  common  experience. 

And  this  attitude  of  understanding  and  respect 
for  the  worker  is  necessary,  not  only  to  appreciate 
w^hat  he  produces,  but  to  preserve  his  power  of 
.production,  again  showing  the  necessity  for  mak- 
ing that  substitute  for  war — human  labor — more 
aggressive  and  democratic.  We  are  told  that  the 
conquered  races  everywhere,  in  their  helplessness, 
are  giving  up  the  genuine  practise  of  their  own 
arts.  In  India,  for  instance,  where  their  arts 
have  been  the  blossom  of  many  years  of  labor, 

202 


WOMEN   IN  GOVERNMENT 

the  conquered  races  are  casting  them  aside  as  of 
no  value  in  order  that  they  may  conform  to  the 
inferior  art,  or  rather,  lack  of  art,  of  their  con- 
querors.    Morris  constantly  lamented  that  in 
some  parts  of  India  the  native  arts  were  quite 
destroyed,  and  in  many  others  nearly  so;  that  in 
all  parts  they  had  more  or  less  begun  to  sicken. 
This  lack  of  respect  and  understanding  of  the 
primitive  arts  found  among  colonies  of  immi- 
grants in  a  modern  cosmopolitan  city,  produces  a 
like  result  in  that  the  arts  languish  and  disappear. 
We  have  made  an  effort  at  Hull-House  to  recover 
something  of  the  early  industries  from  an  immi- 
grant neighborhood,  and  in  a  little  exhibit  called 
a  labor  museum,  we  have  placed  in  historic  se- 
quence and  order  methods  of  spinning  and  weav- 
ing from  a  dozen  nationalities  in  Asia  Minor  and 
Europe.    The  result  has  been  a  striking  exhibi- 
tion of  the  unity  and  similarity  of  the  earlier  in- 
dustrial processes.    Within  the  narrow  confines 
of  one  room,  the  Syrian,  the  Greek,  the  Italian, 
the  Russian,  the  Norwegian,  the  Dutch,  and  the 
Irish  find  that  the  differences  in  their  spinning 
have  been  merely  putting  the  distaff  upon  a  frame 
or  placing  the  old  hand-spindle  in  a  horizontal 
position.    A  group  of  women  representing  vast 
differences  in  religion,  in  language,  in  tradition, 
and  in  nationality,  exhibit  practically  no  difference 
203 


NEWER   IDEALS   OF  PEACE 

in  the  daily  arts  by  which,  for  a  thousand  genera- 
tions, they  have  clothed  their  families.  When 
American  women  come  to  visit  them,  the  quickest 
method,  in  fact  almost  the  only  one,  of  establish- 
ing a  genuine  companionship  with  them,  is 
through  this  same  industry,  unless  we  except  that 
still  older  occupation,  the  care  of  little  children. 
Perhaps  this  experiment  may  claim  to  have  made 
a  genuine  effort  to  find  the  basic  experiences  up- 
on which  a  cosmopolitan  community  may  unite 
at  least  on  the  industrial  side.  The  recent  date 
of  the  industrial  revolution  and  our  nearness  to  a 
primitive  industry  are  shown  by  the  fact  that 
Italian  mothers  are  more  willing  to  have  their 
daughters  work  in  factories  producing  textile  and 
food  stuffs  than  in  those  which  produce  wood  and 
metal.  They  interpret  the  entire  situation  so 
simply  that  it  appears  to  them  just  what  it  is — a 
mere  continuation  of  woman's  traditional  work 
under  changed  conditions.  Another  example  of 
our  nearness  to  early  methods  is  shown  by  the  fact 
that  many  women  from  South  Italy  and  from  the 
remoter  parts  of  Russia  have  never  seen  a  spin- 
ning-wheel, and  look  upon  it  as  a  new  and  marvel- 
ous invention.  But  these  very  people,  who  are 
habitually  at  such  a  disadvantage  because  they  lack 
certain  superficial  qualities  which  are  too  highly 
prized,  have  an  opportunity  in  the  labor  museum, 

204 


WOMEN   IN  GOVERNMENT 


at  least  for  the  moment,  to  assert  a  position  in  the 
community  to  which  their  previous  Hfe  and  train- 
ing entitles  them,  and  they  are  judged  with  some- 
thing of  a  historic  background.  Their  very 
apparent  remoteness  gives  industrial  processes  a 
picturesque  content  and  charm. 

Can  we  learn  our  first   lesson  in  modern 
industry  from  these  humble  peasant  women  who 
have  never  shirked  the  primitive  labors  upon 
which  all  civilized  life  is  founded,  even  as  we 
must  obtain  our  first  lessons  in  social  morality 
from  those  who  are  bearing  the  brunt  of  the  over- 
crowded and  cosmopolitan  city  which  is  the  direct 
result  of  modern  industrial  conditions?    If  we 
contend  that  the  franchise  should  be  extended  to 
women  on  the  ground  that  less  emphasis  is  contin- 
ually placed  upon  the  military  order  and  more 
upon  the  industrial  order  of  society,  we  should 
have  to  insist  that,  if  she  would  secure  her  old 
place  in  industry,  the  modern  woman  must  needs 
fit  her  labors  to  the  present  industrial  organiza- 
tion as  the  simpler  woman  fitted  hers  to  the  more 
simple  industrial  order.    It  has  been  pointed  out 
that  woman  lost  her  earlier  place  when  man 
usurped  the  industrial  pursuits  and  created  wealth 
on  a  scale  unknown  before.    Since  that  time 
women  have  been  reduced  more  and  more  to  a 
state  of  dependency,  until  we  see  only  among  the 
205 


NEWER   IDEALS   OF  PEACE 


European  peasant  women  as  they  work  in  the 
fields,  ''the  heavy,  strong,  enduring,  patient, 
economically  functional  representative  of  what 
the  women  of  our  day  used  to  be." 

Cultural  education  as  it  is  at  present  carried 
on  in  the  most  advanced  schools,  is  to  some  extent 
correcting  the  present  detached  relation  of  women 
to  industry  but  a  sense  of  responsibility  in  rela- 
tion to  the  development  of  industry  would  ac- 
complish much  more.  As  men  earned  their 
citizenship  through  their  readiness  and  ability  to 
defend  their  city,  so  perhaps  woman,  if  she  takes 
a  citizen's  place  in  the  modern  industrial  city, 
will  have  to  earn  it  by  devotion  and  self-abnega- 
tion in  the  service  of  its  complex  needs. 

The  old  social  problems  were  too  often  made 
a  cause  of  war  in  the  belief  that  all  difficulties 
could  be  settled  by  an  appeal  to  arms.  But  cer- 
tainly these  subtler  problems  which  confront  the 
modern  cosmopolitan  city,  the  problems  of  race 
antagonisms  and  economic  adjustments,  must  be 
settled  by  a  more  searching  and  genuine  method 
than  mere  prowess  can  possibly  afford.  The 
first  step  toward  their  real  solution  must  be  made 
upon  a  past  experience  common  to  the  citizens 
as  a  whole  and  connected  with  their  daily  living. 
As  moral  problems  become  more  and  more  asso- 
ciated with  our  civic  and  industrial  organizations, 
206 


WOMEN   IN  GOVERNMENT 


the  demand  for  enlarged  activity  is  more  exigent. 
If  one  could  connect  the  old  maternal  anxieties, 
which  are  really  the  basis  of  family  and  tribal 
life,  with  the  candidates  who  are  seeking  offices, 
it  would  never  be  necessary  to  look  about  for 
other  motive  powers,  and  if  to  this  we  could  add 
maternal  concern  for  the  safety  and  defence  of 
the  industrial  worker,  we  should  have  an  increas- 
ing code  of  protective  legislation. 

We  certainly  may  hope  for  two  results  if  women 
enter  formally  into  municipal  life.  First,  the 
opportunity  to  fulfill  their  old  duties  and  obliga- 
tions with  the  safeguard  and  the  consideration 
which  the  ballot  alone  can  secure  for  them  under 
the  changed  conditions,  and,  second,  the  educa- 
tion which  participation  in  actual  affairs  always 
brings.  As  we  believe  that  woman  has  no  right 
to  allow  what  really  belongs  to  her  to  drop  away 
from  her,  so  we  contend  that  ability  to  perform 
an  obligation  comes  very  largely  in  proportion 
as  that  obligation  is  conscientiously  assumed. 

Out  of  the  mediaeval  city  founded  upon  mil- 
itarism there  arose  in  the  thirteenth  century  a 
new  order,  the  middle  class,  whose  importance 
rested,  not  upon  birth  or  arms,  but  upon  wealth, 
intelligence,  and  organization.  This  middle  class 
achieved  a  sterling  success  in  the  succeeding  six 
centuries  of  industrialism  because  it  was  essential 
207 


NEWER   IDEALS   OF  PEACE 


to  the  existence  and  development  of  the  industrial 
era.  Perhaps  we  can  forecast  the  career  of  wo- 
man, the  citizen,  if  she  is  permitted  to  bear  an 
elector's  part  in  the  coming  period  of  humanita- 
rianism  in  which  government  must  concern  itself 
with  human  welfare.  She  will  bear  her  share  of 
civic  responsibility  because  she  is  essential  to  the 
normal  development  of  the  city  of  the  future,  and 
because  the  definition  of  the  loyal  citizen  as  one 
who  is  ready  to  shed  his  blood  for  his  country, 
has  become  inadequate  and  obsolete. 


208 


CHAPTER  VIII 


PASSING  OF  THE  WAR  VIRTUES 

Of  all  the  winged  words  which  Tolstoy  wrote 
during  the  war  between  Russia  and  Japan, 
perhaps  none  are  more  significant  than  these: 
"The  great  strife  of  our  time  is  not  that  now 
taking  place  between  the  Japanese  and  the  Rus- 
sians, nor  that  which  may  blaze  up  between  the 
white  and  the  yellow  races,  nor  that  strife  which 
is  carried  on  by  mines,  bombs,  and  bullets,  but 
that  spiritual  strife  which,  without  ceasing,  has 
gone  on  and  is  going  on  between  the  enlightened 
consciousness  of  mankind  now  awaiting  for  mani- 
festation and  that  darkness  and  that  burden  which 
surrounds  and   oppresses   mankind."     In  the 
curious  period  of  accommodation  in  which  we 
live,  it  is  possible  for  old  habits  and  new  com- 
punctions to  be  equally  powerful,  and  it  is  almost 
a  matter  of  pride  with  us  that  we  neither  break 
with  the  old  nor  yield  to  the  new.    We  call  this 
attitude  tolerance,  whereas  it  is  often  mere  con- 
fusion of  mind.    Such  mental  confusion  is  strik- 
ingly illustrated  by  our  tendency  to  substitute  a 
14  209 


NEWER   IDEALS   OF  PEACE 

Statement  of  the  historic  evolution  of  an  ideal  of 
conduct  in  place  of  the  ideal  itself.  This  almost 
always  occurs  when  the  ideal  no  longer  accords 
with  our  faithful  experience  of  life  and  when  its 
implications  are  not  justified  by  our  latest  infor- 
mation. In  this  way  we  spare  ourselves  the 
necessity  of  pressing  forward  to  newer  ideals  of 
conduct. 

We  quote  the  convictions  and  achievements  of 
the  past  as  an  excuse  for  ourselves  when  we  lack 
the  energy  either  to  throw  off  old  moral  codes 
which  have  become  burdens  or  to  attain  a  moral- 
ity proportionate  to  our  present  sphere  of  activity. 

At  the  present  moment  the  war  spirit  attempts 
to  justify  its  noisy  demonstrations  by  quoting  its 
great  achievements  in  the  past  and  by  drawing 
attention  to  the  courageous  life  which  it  has 
evoked  and  fostered.    It  is,  however,  perhaps 
significant  that  the  adherents  of  war  are  more 
and  more  justifying  it  by  its  past  record  and  re- 
minding us  of  its  ancient  origin.    They  tell  us 
that  it  is  interwoven  with  every  fibre  of  human 
growth  and  is  at  the  root  of  all  that  is  noble 
and  courageous  in  human  life,  that  struggle  is  the 
basis  of  all  progress,  that  it  is  now  extended  from 
individuals  and  tribes  to  nations  and  races. 

We  may  admire  much  that  is  admirable  in  this 
past  life  of  courageous  warfare,  while  at  the 


210 


PASSING   OF   THE   WAR  VIRTUES 

same  time  we  accord  it  no  right  to  dominate  the 
present,  which  has  traveled  out  of  its  reach  into 
a  land  of  new  desires.    We  may  admit  that  the 
experiences  of  war  have  equipped  the  men  of  the 
present  with  pluck  and  energy,  but  to  insist  upon 
the  selfsame  expression  for  that  pluck  and  energy/ 
would  be  as  stupid  a  mistake  as  if  we  would 
relegate  the  full-grown  citizen,  responding  to 
many  claims  and  demands  upon  his  powers,  to 
the  school-yard  fights  of  his  boyhood,  or  to 'the 
college  contests  of  his  cruder  youth.    The  little 
lad  who  stoutly  defends  himself  on  the  school- 
ground  may  be  worthy  of  much  admiration,  but 
if  we  find  him,  a  dozen  years  later,  the  bullying 
leader  of  a  street-gang  who  bases  his  prestige  on 
the  fact  that  "no  one  can  whip  him,"  our  admira- 
tion cools  amazingly,  and  we  say  that  the  carry- 
ing over  of  those  puerile  instincts  into  manhood 
shows  arrested  development  which  is  mainly 
responsible  for  filling  our  prisons. 

This  confusion  between  the  contemporaneous 
stage  of  development  and  the  historic  role  of  cer- 
tain^ qualities,  is  intensified  by  our  custom  of  re- 
ferring to  social  evolution  as  if  it  were  a  force 
and  not  a  process.  We  assume  that  social  ends 
may  be  obtained  without  the  application  of  social 
energies,  although  we  kno^v  in  our  hearts  that 
the  best  results  of  civilization  have  come  about 


211 


NEWER  IDEALS   OF  PEACE 

only  through  human  will  and  effort.    To  point 
to  the  achievement  of  the  past  as  a  guarantee  for 
continuing  what  has  since  become  shocking  to  us 
is  stupid  business;  it  is  to  forget  that  progress 
itself  depends  upon  adaptation,  upon  a  nice  bal- 
ance between  continuity  and  change.    Let  us  by 
all  means  acknowledge  and  preserve  that  which 
has  been  good  in  warfare  and  in  the  spirit  of  war- 
fare; let  us  gather  it  together  and  incorporate  it 
in  our  national  fibre.    Let  us,  however,  not  be 
guilty  for  a  moment  of  shutting  our  eyes  to  that 
which  for  many  centuries  must  have  been  dis- 
quieting to  the  moral  sense,  but  which  is  grad- 
ually becoming  impossible,  not  only  because  of 
our  increasing  sensibilities,  but  because  great  con- 
structive plans  and  humanized  interests  have 
captured  our  hopes  and  we  are  finding  that  war 
is  an  implement  too  clumsy  and  barbaric  to  sub- 
serve our  purpose.    We  have  come  to  realize  that 
the  great  task  of  pushing  forward  social  justice 
could  be  enormously  accelerated  if  primitive 
methods  as  well  as  primitive  weapons  were  once 
for  all  abolished. 

The  past  may  have  been  involved  in  war  and 
suffering  in  order  to  bring  forth  a  new  and 
beneficent  courage,  an  invincible  ardor  for  con- 
serving and  healing  human  life,  for  understand- 
ing and  elaborating  it.    To  obtain  this  courage 


212 


PASSING   OF   THE   WAR  VIRTUES 


is  to  distinguish  between  a  social  order  founded 
upon  law  enforced  by  authority  and  that  other 
social  order  which  includes  liberty  of  individual 
action  and  complexity  of  group  development. 
The  latter  social  order  would  not  suppress  the 
least  germ  of  promise,  of  growth  and  variety,  but 
would  nurture  all  into  a  full  and  varied  life.  It 
is  not  an  easy  undertaking  to  obtain  it  and  it  can- 
not be  carried  forward  without  conscious  and 
well-defined  efifort.    The  task  that  is  really  be- 
fore us  is  first  to  see  to  it,  that  the  old  virtues  be- 
queathed by  war  are  not  retained  after  they  have 
become  a  social  deterrent  and  that  social  progress 
is  not  checked  by  a  certain  contempt  for  human 
nature  which  is  but  the  inherited  result  of  con- 
quest.   Second,  we  must  act  upon  the  assumption 
that  spontaneous  and  fraternal  action  as  virile  and 
widespread  as  war  itself  is  the  only  method  by 
which  substitutes  for  the  war  virtues  may  be  dis- 
covered. 

It  was  contended  in  the  first  chapter  of  this 
book  that  social  morality  is  developed  through 
sentiment  and  action.  In  this  particular  age  we 
can  live  the  truth  which  has  been  apprehended  by 
our  contemporaries,  that  truth  which  is  especially 
our  own,  only  by  establishing  nobler  and  wiser 
social  relations  and  by  discovering  social  bonds 
better  fitted  to  our  requirements.  Warfare  in 
213 


NEWER   IDEALS   OF  PEACE 

the  past  has  done  much  to  bring  men  together. 
A  sense  of  common  danger  and  the  stirring 
appeal  to  action  for  a  common  purpose,  easily 
open  the  channels  of  sympathy  through  which  we 
partake  of  the  life  about  us.  But  there  are  cer- 
tainly other  methods  of  opening  those  channels. 
A  social  life  to  be  healthy  must  be  consciously  and 
fully  adjusted  to  the  march  of  social  needs,  and 
as  we  may  easily  make  a  mistake  by  forgetting 
that  enlarged  opportunities  are  ever  demanding 
an  enlarged  morality,  so  we  will  fail  in  the  task 
of  substitution  if  we  do  not  demand  social 
sympathy  in  a  larger  measure  and  of  a  quality 
better  adapted  to  the  contemporaneous  situation. 

Perhaps  the  one  point  at  which  this  undertak- 
ing is  most  needed  is  in  regard  to  our  conception 
of  patriotism,  which,  although  as  genuine  as  ever 
before,  is  too  much  dressed  in  the  trappings  of 
the  past  and  continually  carries  us  back  to  its  be- 
ginnings in  military  prowess  and  defence.  To 
have  been  able  to  trace  the  origin  and  development 
of  patriotism  and  then  to  rest  content  with  that, 
and  to  fail  to  insist  that  it  shall  respond  to 
the  stimulus  of  a  larger  and  more  varied  environ- 
ment with  which  we  are  now  confronted,  is  a  con- 
fession of  weakness ;  it  exhibits  lack  of  moral  en- 
terprise and  of  national  vigor. 

214 


PASSING   OF   THE   WAR  VIRTUES 

We  have  all  seen  the  breakdown  of  village 
standards  of  morality  when  the  conditions  of  a 
great  city  are  encountered.  To  do  "the  good  ly- 
ing next  at  hand"  may  be  a  sufficient  formula 
when  the  village  idler  and  his  needy  children  live 
but  a  few  doors  down  the  street,  but  the  same  dic- 
tum may  be  totally  misleading  when  the  villager 
becomes  a  city  resident  and  finds  his  next-door 
neighbors  prosperous  and  comfortable,  while  the 
poor  and  overburdened  live  many  blocks  away 
where  he  would  never  see  them  at  all,  unless  he 
were  stirred  by  a  spirit  of  social  enterprise  to  go 
forth  and  find  them  in  the  midst  of  their  meagre 
living  and  their  larger  needs.  The  spirit  of  vil- 
lage gossip,  penetrating  and  keen  as  it  is,  may  be 
depended  upon  to  bring  to  the  notice  of  the  kind- 
hearted  villager  all  cases  of  suffering — that  some- 
one is  needed  "to  sit  up  all  night"  with  a  sick 
neighbor,  or  that  the  village  loafer  has  been  drunk 
again  and  beaten  his  wife;  but  in  a  city  divided  so 
curiously  into  the  regions  of  the  well-to-do  and  the 
congested  quarters  of  the  immigrant,  the  con- 
scientious person  can  no  longer  rely  upon  gossip. 
There  is  no  intercourse,  not  even  a  scattered  one, 
between  the  two,  save  what  the  daily  paper  brings, 
with  its  invincible  propensity  to  report  the  gossip 
of  poverty  and  crime,  perhaps  a  healthier  tendency 
than  we  imagine.  The  man  who  has  moved  from 
215 


NEWER   IDEALS   OF  PEACE 

the  village  to  the  cosmopolitan  city  and  who  would 
continue  even  his  former  share  of  beneficent  ac- 
tivity must  bestir  himself  to  keep  informed  as  to 
social  needs  and  to  make  new  channels  through 
which  his  sympathy  may  flow.    Without  some 
such  conscious  effort,  his  sympathy  will  finally 
become  stratified  along  the  line  of  his  social  inter- 
course and  he  will  be  unable  really  to  care  for  any 
people  but  his  "own  kind.''    American  concep- 
tions of  patriotism  have  moved,  so  to  speak,  from 
the  New  England  village  into  huge  cosmopolitan 
cities.    They  find  themselves  bewildered  by  the 
change  and  have  not  only  failed  to  make  the 
adjustment,  but  the  very  ef¥ort  in  that  direction 
is  looked  upon  with  deep  suspicion  by  their  old 
village  neighbors.     Unless  our  conception  of 
patriotism  is  progressive,  it  cannot  hope  to  em- 
body the  real  affection  and  the  real  interest  of 
the  nation.    We  know  full  well  that  the  patriot- 
ism of  common  descent  is  the  mere  patriotism 
of  the  clan — the  early  patriotism  of  the  tribe — and 
that,  while  the  possession  of  a  like  territory  is  an 
advance  upon  that  first  conception,  both  of  them 
are  unworthy  to  be  the  patriotism  of  a  great  cos- 
mopolitan nation.    We  shall  not  have  made  any 
genuine  advance  until  we  have  grown  impatient 
of  a  patriotism  founded  upon  military  prowess  and 
defence,  because  this  really  gets  in  the  way  and 
ai6 


PASSING  OF  THE  WAR  VIRTUES 


prevents  the  growth  of  that  beneficent  and  pro- 
gressive patriotism  which  we  need  for  the  under- 
standing and  healing  of  our  current  national 
difficulties. 

To  seek  our  patriotism  in  some  age  other  than 
our  own  is  to  accept  a  code  that  is  totally  inade- 
quate to  help  us  through  the  problems  which  cur- 
rent life  develops.  We  continue  to  found  our 
patriotism  upon  war  and  to  contrast  conquest 
with  nurture,  militarism  with  industrialism,  call- 
ing the  latter  passive  and  inert  and  the  former 
active  and  aggressive,  without  really  facing  the 
situation  as  it  exists.  We  tremble  before  our 
own  convictions,  and  are  afraid  to  find  newer 
manifestations  of  courage  and  daring  lest  we 
thereby  lose  the  virtues  bequeathed  to  us  by  war. 
It  is  a  pitiful  acknowledgment  that  we  have  lost 
them  already  and  that  we  shall  have  to  give  up  the 
ways  of  war,  if  for  no  other  reason  than  to  pre- 
serve the  finer  spirit  of  courage  and  detachment 
which  it  has  engendered  and  developed. 

We  come  at  last  to  the  practical  question  as  to 
how  these  substitutes  for  the  war  virtues  may  be 
found.  How  may  we,  the  children  of  an  in- 
dustrial and  commercial  age,  find  the  courage  and 
sacrifice  which  belong  to  our  industrialism.  We 
may  begin  with  August  Comte's  assertion  that 
man  seeks  to  improve  his  position  in  two  different 
217 


NEWER   IDEALS   OF  PEACE 

ways,  by  the  destruction  of  obstacles  and  by  the 
construction  of  means,  or,  designated  by  their 
most  obvious  social  results,  if  his  contention  is 
correct,  by  military  action  and  by  industrial  ac- 
tion, and  that  the  two  must  long  continue  side  by 
side.    Then  we  find  ourselves  asking  what  may 
be  done  to  make  more  picturesque  those  lives 
which  are  spent  in  a  monotonous  and  wearing 
toil,  compared  to  which  the  camp  is  exciting  and 
the  barracks  comfortable.    How  shall  it  be  made 
to  seem  as  magnificent  patiently  to  correct  the 
wrongs  of  industrialism  as  to  do  battle  for  the 
rights  of  the  nation?    This  transition  ought  not 
to  be  so  difficult  in  America,  for  to  begin  with, 
our  national  life  in  America  has  been  largely 
founded  upon  our  success  in  invention  and  engi- 
neering, in  manufacturing  and  commerce.  Our 
prosperity  has  rested  upon  constructive  labor  and 
material  progress,  both  of  them  in  striking  con- 
trast to  warfare.    There  is  an  element  of  almost 
grim  humor  in  the  nation's  reverting  at  last  to 
the  outworn  methods  of  battle-ships  and  defended 
harbors.    We  may  admit  that  idle  men  need  war 
to  keep  alive  their  courage  and  endurance,  but  we 
have  few  idle  men  in  a  nation  engaged  in  indus- 
trialism.   We  constantly  see  subordination  of 
sensation  to  sentiment  in  hundreds  of  careers 
which  are  not  military;  the  thousands  of  miners 
218 


PASSING   OF   THE   WAR  VIRTUES 


in  Pennsylvania  doubtless  endure  every  year  more 
bodily  pain  and  peril  than  the  same  number  of 
men  in  European  barracks. 

Industrial  life  affords  ample  opportunity  for 
endurance,  discipline,  and  a  sense  of  detachment, 
if  the  struggle  is  really  put  upon  the  highest  level 
of  industrial  efficiency.  But  because  our  indus- 
trial life  is  not  on  this  level,  we  constantly  tend  to 
drop  the  newer  and  less  developed  ideals  for  the 
older  ones  of  warfare,  we  ignore  the  fact  that  war 
so  readily  throws  back  the  ideals  which  the  young 
are  nourishing  into  the  mold  of  those  which  the 
old  should  be  outgrowing.  It  lures  young  men  not 
to  develop,  but  to  exploit ;  it  turns  them  from  the 
courage  and  toil  of  industry  to  the  bravery  and 
endurance  of  war,  and  leads  them  to  forget  that 
civilization  is  the  substitution  of  law  for  war.  It 
incites  their  ambitions,  not  to  irrigate,  to  make 
fertile  and  sanitary,  the  barren  plain  of  the  sav- 
age, but  to  fill  it  with  military  posts  and  tax- 
gatherers,  to  cease  from  pushing  forward  indus- 
trial action  into  new  fields  and  to  fall  back  upon 
military  action. 

We  may  illustrate  this  by  the  most  beneficent 
acts  of  war,  when  the  military  spirit  claiming  to 
carry  forward  civilization  invades  a  country  for 
the  purpose  of  bringing  it  into  the  zone  of  the 
civilized  world.  Militarism  enforces  law  and 
219 


NEWER   IDEALS   OF  PEACE 

order  and  insists  upon  obedience  and  discipline, 
assuming  that  it  will  ultimately  establish  right- 
eousness and  foster  progress.  In  order  to  carry 
out  this  good  intention,  it  first  of  all  clears  the 
decks  of  impedimenta,  although  in  the  process  it 
may  extinguish  the  most  precious  beginnings  of 
self-government  and  the  nucleus  of  self-help, 
which  the  wise  of  the  native  community  have  long 
been  anxiously  hoarding. 

It  is  the  military  idea,  resting  content  as  it 
does  with  the  passive  results  of  order  and  dis- 
cipline, which  confesses  a  totally  inadequate  con- 
ception of  the  value  and  power  of  human  life. 
The  charge  of  obtaining  negative  results  could 
with  great  candor  he  brought  against  militarism, 
while  the  strenuous  task,  the  vigorous  and  diffi- 
cult undertaking,  involving  the  use  of  the  most 
highly  developed  human  powers,  can  be  claimed 
for  industrialism. 

It  is  really  human  constructive  labor  whicK 
must  give  the  newly  invaded  country  a  sense  of 
its  place  in  the  life  of  the  civilized  world,  some 
idea  of  the  effective  occupations  which  it  may 
perform.  In  order  to  accomplish  this  its  energy 
must  be  freed  and  its  resources  developed.  Mili- 
tarism undertakes  to  set  in  order,  to  suppress  and 
to  govern,  if  necessary  to  destroy,  while  indus- 
trialism undertakes  to  liberate  latent  forces,  to 

220 


PASSING  OF   THE   WAR  VIRTUES 


reconcile  them  to  new  conditions,  to  demonstrate 
that  their  aroused  activities  can  no  longer  follow 
caprice,  but  must  fit  into  a  larger  order  of  life. 
To  call  this  latter  undertaking,  demanding  ever 
new  powers  of  insight,  patience,  and  fortitude, 
less  difficult,  less  manly,  less  strenuous,  than  the 
first,  is  on  the  face  of  it  absurd.  It  is  the  soldier 
who  is  inadequate  to  the  difficult  task,  who  strews 
his  ways  with  blunders  and  lost  opportunities,  who 
cannot  justify  his  vocation  by  the  results,  and 
who  is  obliged  to  plead  guilty  to  a  lack  of  rational 
method. 

Of  British  government  in  the  Empire,  an  Eng- 
lishman has  recently  written,  ''We  are  obliged 
in  practise  to  make  a  choice  between  good  order 
and  justice  administered  autocratically  in  accord- 
ance with  British  standards  on  the  one  hand,  and 
delicate,  costly,  doubtful,  and  disorderly  experi- 
ments in  self-government  on  British  lines  upon 
the  other,  and  we  have  practically  everywhere 
decided  upon  the  former  alternative.  It  is,  of 
course,  less  difficult."  '  Had  our  American  ideals 
of  patriotism  and  morality  in  international  rela- 
tions kept  pace  with  our  experience,  had  we 
followed  up  our  wide  commercial  relations  with 
an  adequate  ethical  code,  we  can  imagine  a  body 
of  young  Americans,  ''the  flower  of  our  youth," 

^Imperialism,  by  John  A.  Hobson.    Page  128. 

221 


NEWER   IDEALS   OF  PEACE 

as  we  like  to  say,  proudly  declining  commercial 
advantages  founded  upon  forced  military  occu- 
pation and  informing  their  well-meaning  govern- 
ment that  they  declined  to  accept  openings  on  any 
such  terms  as  these,  that  their  ideals  of  patriotism 
and  of  genuine  government  demanded  the  play  of 
their  moral  prowess  and  their  constructive  intelli- 
gence. Certainly  in  America  we  have  a  chance 
to  employ  something  more  active  and  virile,  more 
inventive,  more  in  line  with  our  temperament  and 
tradition,  than  the  mere  desire  to  increase  com- 
mercial relations  by  armed  occupation  as  other 
governments  have  done.  A  different  conduct  is 
required  from  a  democracy  than  from  the  mere 
order-keeping,  bridge-building,  tax-gathering 
Roman,  or  from  the  conscientious  Briton  carrying 
the  blessings  of  an  established  government  and 
enlarged  commerce  to  all  quarters  of  the  globe. 

It  has  been  the  time-honored  custom  to  attribute 
unjust  wars  to  the  selfish  ambition  of  rulers  who 
remorselessly  sacrifice  their  subjects  to  satisfy 
their  greed.  But,  as  Lecky  has  recently  pointed 
out,  it  remains  to  be  seen  whether  or  not  demo- 
cratic rule  will  diminish  war.  Immoderate  and 
uncontrolled  desires  are  at  the  root  of  most 
national  as  well  as  of  most  individual  crimes,  and 
a  large  number  of  persons  may  be  moved  by  un- 
worthy ambitions  quite  as  easily  as  a  few.    If  the 

222 


PASSING  OF  THE  WAR  VIRTUES 

electorate  of  a  democracy  accustom  themselves 
to  take  the  commercial  view  of  life,  to  consider  the 
extension  of  trade  as  the  test  of  a  national  pros- 
perity, it  becomes  comparatively  easy  for  mere 
extension  of  commercial  opportunity  to  assume  a 
moral  aspect  and  to  receive  the  moral  sanction. 
Unrestricted  commercialism  is  an  excellent  prepa- 
ration for  governmental  aggression.    The  nation 
which  is  accustomed  to  condone  the  questionable 
business  methods  of  a  rich  man  because  of  his 
success,  will  find  no  difficulty  in  obscuring  the 
moral  issues  involved  in  any  undertaking  that  is 
successful.    It  becomes  easy  to  deny  the  moral 
basis  of  self-government  and  to  substitute  mili- 
tarism. .The  soldier  formerly  looked  down  upon 
the  merchant  whom  he  now  obeys,  as  he  still  looks 
down  upon  the  laborer  as  a  man  who  is  engaged 
in  a  business  inferior  to  his  own,  as  someone  who 
is  dull  and  passive  and  ineffective.    When  our 
public  education  succeeds  in  freeing  the  creative 
energy  and  developing  the  skill  which  the  advance 
of  industry  demands,  this  attitude  must  disap- 
pear, and  a  spectacle  such  as  that  recently  seen  in 
London  among  the  idle  men  returned  from  service 
in  South  Africa,  who  refused  to  work  through  a 
contemptuous  attitude  towards  the  "slow  life''  of 
the  laborer,  will  become  impossible.    We  have  as 
yet  failed  to  uncover  the  relative  difficulty  and 
223 


NEWER  IDEALS  OF  PEACE 

requisite  training  for  the  two  methods  of  life. 

It  is  difficult  to  illustrate  on  a  national  scale 
the  substitution  of  the  ideals  of  labor  for  those  of 
warfare. 

At  the  risk  of  being  absurd,  and  with  the  cer- 
tainty of  pushing  an  illustration  beyond  its  legit- 
imate limits,  I  am  venturing  to  typify  this  substi- 
tution by  the  one  man  whom  the  civilized  world 
has  most  closely  associated  with  military  ideals, 
the  present  Emperor  of  Germany.    We  may 
certainly  believe  that  the  German  Emperor  is  a 
conscientious  man,  who  means  to  do  his  duty  to 
all  his  subjects;  that  he  regards  himself,  not  only 
as  general  and  chief  of  the  army,  but  also  as  the 
fostering  father  of  the  humble  people.    Let  us 
imagine  the  quite  impossible  thing  that  for  ten 
years  he  does  not  review  any  troops,  does  not  at- 
tend any  parades,  does  not  wear  a  uniform,  nor 
hear  the  clang  of  the  sword  as  he  walks,  but  that 
during  these  ten  years  he  lives  with  the  peasants 
"who  drive  the  painful  plow,"  that  he  constantly 
converses  with  them,  and  subjects  himself  to  their 
alternating  hopes  and  fears  as  to  the  result  of  the 
harvest,  at  best  so  inadequate  for  supplying  their 
wants  and  for  paying  their  taxes.  Let  us  imagine 
that  the  German  Emperor  during  these  halcyon 
years,  in  addition  to  the  companionship  of  the 
humble,  reads  only  the  folk-lore,  the  minor  poetry 
224 


PASSING  OF  THE  WAR  VIRTUES 


and  the  plaintive  songs  in  which  German  literature 
is  so  rich,  until  he  comes  to  see  each  man  of  the 
field  as  he  daily  goes  forth  to  his  toil  ''with  a 
soldier  tied  to  his  back/'  exhausted  by  the  double 
strain  of  his  burden  and  his  work. 

Let  us  imagine  this  Emperor  going  through 
some  such  profound  moral  change  as  befell  Count 
Tolstoy  when  he  quitted  his  military  service  in 
the  Caucasus  and  lived  with  the  peasants  on  his 
estate,  with  this  difference  that,  instead  of  feeling 
directly  responsible  for  a  village  of  humble  folk, 
he  should  come  to  feel  responsible  for  all  the 
toilers  of  the  'Tatherland''  and  for  the  inter- 
national results  of  the  German  army.    Let  us 
imagine  that  in  his  self-surrender  to  the  humblest 
of  his  people,  there  would  gradually  grow  up  in 
his  subconsciousness,  forces  more  ideal  than  any 
which  had  possessed  him  before;  that  his  inter- 
ests and  thoughts  'would  gradually  shift  from 
war  and  the  manoeuvres  and  extensions  of  the 
army,  to  the  unceasing  toil,  the  permanent  pa- 
tience, which  lie  at  the  bottom  of  all  national 
existence;  that  the  life  of  the  common  people, 
which  is  so  infinite  in  its  moral  suggestiveness, 
would  open  up  to  him  new  moral  regions,  would 
stir  new  energies  within  him,  until  there  would 
take  place  one  of  those  strange  alterations  in  per- 
sonality of  which  hundreds  of  examples  are  re- 
^5  225 


NEWER   IDEALS   OF  PEACE 

corded.    Under  a  glow  of  generous  indignation, 
magnanimity,  loyalty  to  his  people,  a  passion  of 
self-surrender  to  his  new  ideals,  we  can  imagine 
that  the  imperial  temperament  would  waste  no 
time  in  pinings  and  regret,  but  that,  his  energies 
being  enlisted  in  an  overmastering  desire  to  free 
the  people  from  the  burden  of  the  army,  he  would 
drive  vigorously  in  the  direction  of  his  new 
ideals.    It  is  impossible  to  imagine  him  "passive" 
under  this  conversion  to  the  nefwer  ideals  of 
peace.    He  would  no  more  be  passive  than  St. 
Paul  was  after  his  conversion.    He  would  regard 
the  four  million  men  in  Europe  shut  up  in  bar- 
racks, fed  in  idleness  by  toiling  peasants,  as  an 
actual  wrong  and  oppression.    They  would  all 
have  to  be  freed  and  returned  to  normal  life  and 
occupation— not  through  the  comparatively  easy 
method  of  storming  garrisons,  in  which  he  has  had 
training,  but  through  conviction  on  the  part  of 
rulers  and  people  of  the  wrong  and  folly  of  bar- 
rack idleness  and  military  glitter.    The  freeing 
of  the  Christians  from  the  oppressions  of  the 
Turks,  of  the  Spaniards  from  the  Moslems,  could 
offer  no  more  strenuous  task— always,  however, 
with  the  added  difficulty  and  complication  that 
the  change  in  the  people  must  be  a  moral  change 
analogous  to  the  one  which  had  already  taken 
place  within  himself;  that  he  must  be  debarred 

226 


PASSING   OF   THE   WAR  VIRTUES 

from  the  use  of  weapons,  to  which  his  earHer  Hfe 
had  made  him  famiHar ;  that  his  high  task,  while 
enormous  in  its  proportion,  was  still  most  delicate 
in  its  character,  and  must  be  undertaken  without 
the  guarantee  of  precedent,  and  without  any  surety 
of  success.  ''Smitten  with  the  great  vision  of 
social  righteousness,"  as  so  many  of  his  contem- 
poraries have  been,  he  could  not  permit  himself  to 
be  blinded  or  to  take  refuge  in  glittering  general- 
ities, but,  even  as  St.  Paul  arose  from  his  vision 
and  went  on  his  way  in  a  new  determination  never 
again  changed,  so  he  would  have  to  go  forth  to  a 
mission,  imperial  indeed  in  its  magnitude,  but 
"over-imperiar'  in  the  sweep  of  its  consequences 
and  in  the  difficulty  of  its  accomplishment. 

Certainly  counting  all  the  hours  of  the  Em- 
peror's life  spent  in  camp  and  court  dominated 
by  military  pomp  and  ambition,  he  has  given  more 
than  ten  years  to  military  environment  and  much 
less  than  ten  years  to  the  bulk  of  his  people,  and  it 
would  not  be  impossible  to  imagine  such  a  conver- 
sion due  to  the  reaction  of  environment  and  inter- 
est. Such  a  change  having  taken  place,  should 
we  hold  him  royal  in  temper  or  worthy  of  the  tra- 
ditions of  knight-errantry,  if  he  were  held  back 
by  commercial  considerations,  if  he  hesitated  be- 
cause the  Krupp  Company  could  sell  no  more  guns 
and  would  be  thrown  out  of  business  ?  We  should 
227 


NEWER   IDEALS   OF  PEACE 

say  to  this  Emperor  whom  our  imaginations  have 
evoked,  Were  your  enthusiasms  genuine  enough, 
were  your  insights  absolutely  true,  you  would  see 
of  how  little  consequence  these  things  really  are, 
and  how  easily  adjusted.    Let  the  Krupp  facto- 
ries, with  their  tremendous  resources  in  machinery 
and  men,  proceed  to  manufacture  dredging  ma- 
chines for  the  reclaiming  of  the  waste  land  in 
Posen;  let  them  make  new  inventions  to  relieve 
the  drudgery  of  the  peasant,  agricultural  imple- 
ments adequate  to  Germany's  agricultural  re- 
sources and  possibilities.    They  will  find  need 
for  all  the  power  of  invention  which  they  can  com- 
mand, all  the  manufacturing  and  commercial 
ability  which  they  now  employ.    It  is  part  of 
your  new  vocation  to  adjust  the  industries  now 
tributary  to  the  standing  armies  and  organization 
of  warfare,  to  useful  and  beneficent  occupations; 
to  transform  and  readjust  all  their  dependent 
industries,  from  the  manufacturing  of  cannon  and 
war-ships  to  that  of  gold  braid  and  epaulets. 
It  is  your  mission  to  revive  and  increase  agri- 
culture, industry,  and  commerce,  by  diverting  all 
the  energy  which  is  now  directed  to  the  feeding, 
clothing,  and  arming  of  the  idle,  into  the  legiti- 
mate and  normal  channels  of  life. 

It  is  certainly  not  more  difficult  to  imagine  such 
a  change  occurring  to  an  entire  people  than  in  the 
228 


PASSING   OF   THE   WAR  VIRTUES 


mind  and  purpose  of  one  man — in  fact,  such 
changes  are  going  on  all  about  us. 

The  advance  of  constructive  labor  and  the  sub- 
sidence and  disappearance  of  destructive  war- 
fare is  a  genuine  line  of  progression.    One  sees 
much  of  protection  and  something  of  construc- 
tion in  the  office  of  war,  as  the  Roman  bridges 
survived  throughout  Europe  long  after  the  legions 
which  built  them  and  crossed  them  for  new  con- 
quests had  passed  out  of  mind.    Also,  in  the 
rising  tide  of  labor  there  is  a  large  admixture  of 
warfare,  of  the  purely  militant  spirit  which  is 
sometimes  so  dominant  that  it  throws  the  entire 
movement  into  confusion  and  leads  the  laborer 
to  renounce  his  birthright;  but  nevertheless  the 
desire  for  battle  is  becoming  constantly  more 
restricted  in  area.    It  still  sways  in  regions  where 
men  of  untamed  blood  are  dwelling,  and  among 
men  who,  because  they  regard  themselves  as  a 
superior  race,  imagine  that  they  are  free  from  the 
ordinary  moral  restraints;  but  its  territory  con- 
stantly grows  smaller  and  its  manifestations  more 
guarded.     Doubtless  war  will  exist  for  many 
generations  among  semi-savage  tribes,  and  it 
will  also  break  out  in  those  nations  which  may  be 
roused  and  dominated  by  the  unrestricted  com- 
mercial spirit ;  but  the  ordinary  life  of  man  will  go 
229 


NEWER   IDEALS   OF  PEACE 

on  without  it,  as  it  becomes  transmitted  into  a 
desire  for  normal  human  relationship. 

It  is  difficult  to  predict  at  what  moment  the 
conviction  that  war  is  foolish  or  wasteful  or  un- 
justifiable may  descend  upon  the  earth,  and  it  is 
also  impossible  to  estimate  among  how  many 
groups  of  people  this  conviction  has  already  be- 
come established. 

The  Doukhobors  are  a  religious  sect  in  Russia 
whose  creed  emphasizes  the  teaching  of  non- 
resistance.  A  story  is  told  of  one  of  their  young 
men  who,  because  of  his  refusal  to  enter  the 
Russian  army,  was  brought  for  trial  before  a 
judge,  who  reasoned  with  him  concerning  the 
folly  of  his  course  and  in  return  received  a  homily 
upon  the  teachings  of  Jesus.  '^Quite  right  you 
are,"  answered  the  judge,  "from  the  point  of 
abstract  virtue,  but  the  time  has  not  yet  come  to 
put  into  practise  the  literal  sayings  of  Christ." 
"The  time  may  not  have  come  for  you,  your 
Honor,"  was  the  reply,  "but  the  time  has  come 
for  us."  Who  can  tell  at  what  hour  vast  num- 
bers of  Russian  peasants  upon  those  Russian 
steppes  will  decide  that  the  time  has  come  for 
them  to  renounce  warfare,  even  as  their  proto- 
type, the  mujik.  Count  Tolstoy,  has  already  de- 
cided that  it  has  come  for  him?  Conscious  as 
the  peasants  are  of  religious  motive,  they  will 
230 


PASSING   OF   THE   WAR  VIRTUES 


meet  a  cheerful  martyrdom  for  their  convictions, 
as  so  many  of  the  Doukhobors  have  done.  It 
may,  however,  be  easy  to  overestimate  this 
changed  temper  because  of  the  simple  yet  dra- 
matic formulation  given  by  Tolstoy  to  the  non- 
resisting  spirit.  How  far  Tolstoy  is  really  the 
mouthpiece  of  a  great  moral  change  going  on  in 
the  life  of  the  Russian  peasant  and  how  far  he 
speaks  merely  for  himself,  it  is,  of  course,  impos- 
sible to  state.  If  only  a  few  peasants  are  expe- 
riencing this  change,  his  genius  has  certainly  done 
much  to  make  their  position  definite.  The  man 
who  assumes  that  a  new  degree  of  virtue  is 
possible,  thereby  makes  it  real  and  tangible  to 
those  who  long  to  possess  it  but  lack  courage. 
Tolstoy  at  least  is  ready  to  predict  that  in  the 
great  affairs  of  national  disarmament,  it  may  eas- 
ily be  true  that  the  Russian  peasants  will  take  the 
first  steps. 

Their  armed  rebellion  may  easily  be  overcome 
by  armed  troops,  but  what  can  be  done  with  their 
permanent  patience,  their  insatiable  hunger  for 
holiness  ?  All  idealism  has  its  prudential  aspects, 
and,  as  has  been  pointed  out  by  Mr.  Ferris,^  no 
other  form  of  revolution  is  so  fitted  to  an  agri- 
cultural people  as  this  continued  outburst  of 
passive  resistance  among  whole  communities,  not 

^  The  Grand  Mujik,  G.  H.  Perris 
231 


NEWER   IDEALS   OF  PEACE 


in  theory,  but  in  practise.  This  peasant  move- 
ment goes  on  in  spite  of  persecution,  perfectly 
spontaneous,  self-reHant,  colossal  in  the  silent 
confidence  and  power  of  endurance.  In  this  day 
of  Maxim  guns  and  high  explosives,  the  old 
method  of  revolt  would  be  impossible  to  an  agri- 
cultural people,  but  the  non-resistant  strike  against 
military  service  lies  directly  in  line  with  the 
temperament  and  capacity  of  the  Russian  people. 
That  "the  government  cannot  put  the  whole 
population  in  prison,  and,  if  it  could,  it  would 
still  be  without  material  for  an  army,  and  without 
money  for  its  support,"  is  an  almost  irrefutable 
argument.  We  see  here,  at  least,  the  beginnings 
of  a  sentiment  that  shall,  if  sufficiently  developed, 
make  war  impossible  to  an  entire  people,  a  con- 
viction of  sin  manifesting  itself  throughout  a 
nation. 

Whatever  may  have  been  true  of  the  revolu- 
tionist of  the  past  when  his  spike  was  on  a  certain 
level  of  equality  with  the  bayonet  of  the  regular 
soldier,  and  his  enthusiasm  and  daring  could,  in 
large  measure,  overcome  the  difference,  it  is  cer- 
tainly true  now  that  such  simple  arms  as  a  revolu- 
tionist could  command,  would  be  utterly  futile 
against  the  equipment  of  the  regular  soldier.  To 
continue  the  use  of  armed  force  means,  under 
these  circumstances,  that  we  must  refer  the  possi- 
232 


PASSING   OF   THE   WAR  VIRTUES 

bilities  of  all  social  and  industrial  advance  to  the 
consent  of  the  owners  of  the  Maxim  guns.  We 
must  deny  to  the  humble  the  possibility  of  the 
initiation  of  progressive  movements  employing 
revolution  or,  at  least,  we  must  defer  all  advance 
until  the  humble  many  can  persuade  the  powerful 
few  of  the  righteousness  of  their  cause,  and  we 
must  throw  out  the  working  class  from  participa- 
tion in  the  beginnings  of  social  revolutions. 
Tolstoy  would  make  non-resistance  aggressive. 
He  would  carry  over  into  the  reservoirs  of  moral 
influence  all  the  strength  which  is  now  spent  in 
coercion  and  resistance.    It  is  an  experiment 
which  in  its  fullness  has  never  been  tried  in  human 
history,  and  it  is  worthy  of  a  genius.    As  moral 
influence  has  ever  a  larger  place  in  individual  rela- 
tionship and  as  physical  force  becomes  daily  more 
restricted  in  area,  so  Tolstoy  would  ''speed  up" 
the  process  in  collective  relationships  and  reset 
the  whole  of  international  life  upon  the  basis  of 
good  will  and  intelligent  understanding.    It  does 
not  matter  that  he  has  entered  these  new  moral 
fields  through  the  narrow  gateway  of  personal  ex- 
perience; that  he  sets  forth  his  convictions  with 
the  limitations  of  the  Russian  governmental  en- 
vironment ;  that  he  is  regarded  at  this  moment  by 
the   Russian   revolutionists  as  a  quietist  and 
reactionary.    He  has  nevertheless  reached  down 
233 


NEWER   IDEALS   OF  PEACE 


into  the  moral  life  of  the  humble  people  and  for- 
mulated for  them  as  for  us  the  secret  of  their  long 
patience  and  unremitting  labor.  Therefore,  in 
the  teachings  of  Tolstoy,  as  in  the  life  of  the 
peasants,  coextensive  with  the  doctrine  of  non- 
resistance,  stress  is  laid  upon  productive  labor.  The 
peasant  Bandereff,  from  whom  Tolstoy  claims  to 
have  learned  much,  has  not  only  proclaimed  him- 
self as  against  war,  but  has  written  a  marvelous 
book  entitled  ''Bread  Labor,"  expressing  once 
more  the  striking  antithesis,  the  eternal  contrast 
between  war  and  labor,  and  between  those  who 
abhor  the  one  and  ever  advocate  the  other. 

War  on  the  one  hand — plain  destruction,  Von 
Moltke  called  it — represents  the  life  of  the  gar- 
rison and  the  tax-gatherer,  the  Roman  emperor 
and  his  degenerate  people,  living  upon  the  fruits 
of  their  conquest.  Labor,  on  the  other  hand,  rep- 
resents productive  efifort,  holding  carefully  what 
has  been  garnered  by  the  output  of  brain  and 
muscle,  guarding  the  harvest  jealously  because 
it  is  the  precious  bread  men  live  by. 

It  is  quite  possible  that  we  have  committed  the 
time-honored  folly  of  looking  for  a  sudden  change 
in  men's  attitude  toward  war,  even  as  the  poor 
alchemists  wasted  their  lives  in  searching  for  a 
magic  fluid  and  did  nothing  to  discover  the  great 
laws  governing  chemical  changes  and  reactions, 
234 


PASSING   OF   THE   WAR  VIRTUES 

the  knowledge  of  which  would  have  developed 
untold  wealth  beyond  their  crude  dreams  of 
transmuted  gold. 

The  final  moral  reaction  may  at  last  come, 
accompanied  by  deep  remorse,  too  tardy  to  re- 
claim all  the  human  life  which  has  been  spent 
and  the  treasure  which  has  been  wasted,  or  it 
may  come  with  a  great  sense  of  joy  that  all  vol- 
untary destruction  of  human  life,  all  the  delib- 
erate wasting  of  the  fruits  of  labor,  have  become 
a  thing  of  the  past,  and  that  whatever  the  future 
contains  for  us,  it  will  at  least  be  free  from  war. 
We  may  at  last  comprehend  the  truth  of  that 
which  Ruskin  has  stated  so  many  times,  that  we 
worship  the  soldier,  not  because  he  goes  forth  to 
slay,  but  to  be  slain. 

That  this  world  peace  movement  should  be 
arising  from  the  humblest  without  the  sanction 
and  in  some  cases  with  the  explicit  indifference, 
of  the  church  founded  by  the  Prince  of  Peace,  is 
simply  another  example  of  the  strange  paths  of 
moral  evolution. 

To  some  of  us  it  seems  clear  that  marked  mani- 
festations of  this  movement  are  found  in  the  im- 
migrant quarters  of  American  cities.  The  pre- 
vious survey  of  the  immigrant  situation  would  in- 
dicate that  all  the  peoples  of  the  world  have  be- 
come part  of  the  American  tribunal,  and  that  their 
235 


NEWER   IDEALS   OF  PEACE 

sense  of  pity,  their  clamor  for  personal  kindness, 
their  insistence  upon  the  right  to  join  in  our  prog- 
ress, can  no  longer  be  disregarded.    The  burdens 
and  sorrows  of  men  have  unexpectedly  become 
intelligent  and  urgent  to  this  nation,  and  it  is  only 
by  accepting  them  with  some  magnanimity  that 
we  can  develop  the  larger  sense  of  justice  which 
is  becoming  world-wide  and  is  lying  in  ambush, 
as  it  were,  to  manifest  itself  in  governmental  re- 
lations.   Men  of  all  nations  are  determining  up- 
on the  abolition  of  degrading  poverty,  .disease, 
and  intellectual  weakness,  with  their  resulting  in- 
dustrial inefficiency,  and  are  making  a  determined 
effort  to  conserve  even  the  feeblest  citizen  to  the 
State.    To  join  in  this  determined  effort  is  to 
break  through  national  bonds  and  to  unlock  the 
latent  fellowship  between  man  and  man.    In  a 
political  campaign  men  will  go  through  every  pos- 
sible hardship  in  response  to  certain  political  loyal- 
ties; in  a  moment  of  national  danger  men  will 
sacrifice  every  personal  advantage.    It  is  but  nec- 
essary to  make  this  fellowship  wider,  to  extend 
its  scope  without  lowering  its  intensity.  Those 
emotions  which  stir  the  spirit  to  deeds  of  self- 
surrender  and  to  high  enthusiasm,  are  among  the 
world's  most  precious  assets.    That  this  emotion 
has  so  often  become  associated  with  war,  by  no 
means  proves  that  it  cannot  be  used  for  other  ends. 
236 


PASSING   OF   THE   WAR  VIRTUES 

There  is  something  active  and  tangible  in  this 
new  internationahsm,  although  it  is  difficult  to 
make  it  clear,  and  in  our  striving  for  a  new  word 
with  which  to  express  this  new  and  important 
sentiment,  we  are  driven  to  the  rather  absurd 
phrase  of  ''cosmic  patriotism."  Whatever  it 
may  be  called,  it  may  yet  be  strong  enough 
to  move  masses  of  men  out  of  their  narrow  nation- 
al considerations  and  cautions  into  new  reaches  of 
human  effort  and  affection.  Religion  has  long 
ago  taught  that  only  as  the  individual  can  estab- 
lish a  sense  of  union  with  a  power  for  righteous- 
ness not  himself,  can  he  experience  peace;  and  it 
may  be  possible  that  the  nations  will  be  called  to 
a  similar  experience. 

The  International  Peace  Conference  held  in 
Boston  in  1904  was  opened  by  a  huge  meeting 
in  which  men  of  influence  and  modern  thought 
from  four  continents,  gave  reasons  for  their  be- 
lief in  the  passing  of  war.  But  none  was  so 
modern,  so  fundamental  and  so  trenchant,  as  the 
address  which  was  read  from  the  prophet  Isaiah. 
He  founded  the  cause  of  peace  upon  the  cause 
of  righteousness,  not  only  as  expressed  in  polit- 
ical relations,  but  also  in  industrial  relations. 
He  contended  that  peace  could  be  secured  only  as 
men  abstained  from  the  gains  of  oppression  and 
responded  to  the  cause  of  the  poor;  that  swords 
237 


NEWER   IDEALS   OF  PEACE 


would  finally  be  beaten  into  plowshares  and  prun- 
ing-hooks,  not  because  men  resolved  to  be  peace- 
ful, but  because  all  the  metal  of  the  earth  would  be 
turned  to  its  proper  use  when  the  poor  and  their 
children  should  be  abundantly  fed.  It  was  as  if 
the  ancient  prophet  foresaw  that  under  an  en- 
lightened industrialism  peace  would  no  longer  be 
an  absence  of  war,  but  the  unfolding  of  world- 
wide processes  making  for  the  nurture  of  human 
life.  He  predicted  the  moment  which  has  come 
to  us  now  that  peace  is  no  longer  an  abstract  dog- 
ma but  has  become  a  rising  tide  of  moral  en- 
thusiasm slowly  engulfing  all  pride  of  conquest 
and  making  war  impossible. 


238 


INDEX 


Altruism,  manifestations  of,  17; 
in  politics,  48. 

Anglo-Saxon,  temptation  to  gov- 
ern all  peoples  alike,  47;  dis- 
trust of  experiment,  67;  in- 
dividualistic, 68;  attitude  to- 
wards self-government,  112. 

Arbitration,  change  in  attitude 
toward,  133;  in  New  Zealand, 
134. 

Aristotle's  ideal  of  a  city,  92. 

Assimilation,  limit  to  United 
States  power  of,  39;  work- 
ingman's  attitude  toward,  94, 
117. 

Bandereff,  234 
Bentham,  23. 
Bloch,  Jean  de,  4. 
Booth,  Charles,  maps  of  London, 
86. 

Bosanquet,  Mrs.  Bernard,  116. 
Buckle,  23. 
Burns,  John,  125. 

Charity,  organization  of  in  New 
York,  74;  modern,  democratic 
and  constructive,  79;  exten- 
sion of,  84;  and  unskilled 
labor,  152. 

Chicago  Municipal  Lodging 
House,  157. 

Chicago  Federation  of  Labor, 
130,  131. 

Chicago  Stock  Yards  Strike, 
power  of  unions  for  amalga- 
mation shown  in,  96;  object 
of,  10 1,  iii;  use  of  referen- 
dum vote  in,  103,  108;  good 
order     of,     104;  paradoxes 


shown    by,    104;    example  of 
national    appeal  subordinated 
to   union,   106;  strike-breaker 
in,  106;  Greek  in,  109. 
Child    Labor,    social    waste  of, 
28;  a  national  problem,  107; 
industrial   value   of,   154;  re- 
sponsibility   of    State,  156; 
effect    of    sub-divided,  158; 
effect  of  premature,   tsg;  ef- 
fect on  parents,  161;  effect  on 
product,  162. 
Child  Labor  Legislation,  makes 
for  better  citizens,  73;  immi- 
grant parents   and,   74;  uni- 
form, 168;  leisure  gained  for 
play,  169. 
Commerce,    international,  115; 
modern  representative  of  con- 
quest, 116. 
Comte,  Augustus,  217. 
Constitution  of  the  U.  S.,  and 
the  immigrant,  42,  43,  72,  73. 
Contempt,  social  results  of,  51; 
in  industrialism,  116;  for  im- 
migrant,   151;    for  primitive 
arts,  202. 
Cosmopolitan  city,  beginnings  of 
newer  ideals  of  peace  found 
in,  II,  13,  18;  centers  of  radi- 
calism, 16;  bond  of  union  in, 
17,  204;  difficulties  due  to  size 
of,  86,  216;  subtle  problems  of, 
206. 

Cosmopolitan  standard,  lack  of, 
78. 

Dante,  21. 

Democratic  government,  causes 
of  failure  of,  47;  arousing 
enthusiasm  for,  63;  result  of 


INDEX 


moral  effort,  75;  inherited 
form  of,  121. 
Democracy,  modified  slowly,  37; 
repressive  legislation  in,  52; 
lack  of  civic  expression  for, 
59;  failure  to  apprehend,  91; 
effects  of  commercialism  on, 
222. 

Denver  Juvenile    Court,  81. 

Doctrinaire  method,  weakness  of, 
31;  conditions  settled  by,  53; 
unattached  to  experience,  72; 
not  fitted  to  modern  patriot- 
ism, 74. 

Domestic  service,  51;  a  review 
of  the  history  of,  199. 

Doukhobors,  situation  in  Can- 
ada, 67;  emphasize  non-resist- 
ance, 230;  meet  martyrdom, 
231. 

Education,  related  to  industrial 
efficiency,    16;    belief    in,  as 
social   remedy,    21;    of  vital 
importance  to  city,   73;  com- 
pulsory, 74;  advanced  and  re- 
form schools,   82;  passion  in 
America,  85;  distinctive 
achievement  in  America,  166; 
for  factory  children,  167;  less 
expensive  than  repression,  175; 
already  democratized,  178. 
Educators,  recognizing  industrial- 
ism, 169. 
Eighteenth-century  philosophy, 
abandonment  of,  required,  28; 
inadequacy  of,  31;  responsible 
for  immigration,  40;  belief  in 
universal  franchise,  42;  ideal 
man  of,  60;  ideals  still  influ- 
ence statesman,  70;  retained  in 
America,  91;  formula  of  equal- 
ity, 117;  radicalism  of,  121. 
Employer,  prone  to  attack  new 
union,    129;    charges  against 
unions,    135;  attitude  toward 
business  relations  with  unions, 
138;  traditions  in  household, 
20I» 


England,  labor  laws  of,  152;  de- 
basement of  products  of,  166. 

Franchise,  38;  universal  pana- 
cea, 42;  universal  franchise, 
52;  beginnings  of  municipal, 
180;  military  test  absurd,  182; 
why  women  should  have,  192. 

Factory  system,  163;  worst  evils 
of    149;   uneducational,  173- 

Gang,  almost  tribal  in  organiza- 
tion, 176;  political  training  in, 
177- 

German  Emperor,  224. 
Germany,  government  deals  with 
needs  of  workingman,  88; 
police  socialized  in,  89;  not 
afraid  to  extend  municipal 
functions,  91;  economic  pro- 
tection in,  122,  152;  opposi- 
tion to  militarism  in,  165. 
Golden,     State     Reform  State 

School,  81. 
Government,  newer  manifesta- 
tions of,  15;  away  from  the 
life  of  the  people,  35;  oppress- 
ive, dependent  on  the  sword, 
36;  opposition  to,  formerly 
patriotism,  42;  dealing  with 
naturalization,  42 ;  test  not  cur- 
rent, 47;  concern  for  the 
young  incorporated  in,  80; 
fear  of  extending  functions, 
84;  traditional  activities  mea- 
gre, 87;  non-interference  in 
industry,  90;  functions  of,  loi; 
patriotic  citizens  forced  to 
ignore,  112. 

Hague  tribunal,  5. 

Hebrew  alliance,  74. 

Heroism,  new,  25*  218. 

Historic  method,  31,  63. 

Hobhouse,  L.  T.,  6. 

Hobson,  John  A.,  221. 

Household  labor,  conference  at 
Lake  Placid,  198;  history  of, 
in  America,  199;  causes  of 
paucity  of,  200. 


240 


INDEX 


Hull-House,  experiences,  50,  58, 
77,  82,  91,  119,  143,  159,  194^ 
203,  204. 

Humanitarianism,  in  immigrant 
quarters,  15;  aggressive,  26; 
scientific  method  applied  to, 
28;  cosmopolitan,  76;  present 
stage  of,  79,  99;  its  relation 
to  labor  power,  165. 

Idealism,  provincial  aspects  of, 
231. 

Immigrants,    emotional  senti- 
ment   among,     13;  unusual 
power   of  association  among, 
14;  franchise  extended  to,  38; 
philosophy   in   regard  to,  41;' 
exploitation   of,   42,  45;  eva- 
sion of  immigration  laws  by, 
47;  contempt  for,  49;  charm 
and  historical  association 
among,  64,  70;  ignoring  past 
experience  of,  65;  beginnings 
of  self-government  among,  71; 
relations  of  politician  to,  72; 
attempts  to  teach  patriotism  to' 
75 ;   revelation  of   social  cus- 
toms among,    79;  standardiz- 
ing by  workmen,  93;  difficul- 
ties largely  industrial,  94;  as 
wage    lowering    weapon,  97; 
standard   of  living   for,  102, 
116;  claim  on  charitable  funds,' 
152;  p  esent   contrasted  with 
youthful    condition    of,  161; 
early   industries  among,  203,' 
historic  backgrounds  of,  205! 
manifestations  of  peace  move- 
ment among,  235. 
Immigration,  decreased  by  indus- 
trial depression,  44;  of  recent 
years,  200. 
Industrialism,    15;    versus  mili- 
tarism,   28,   220;  significance 
of  primitive  arts  in  relation  to, 
64;  idealism  in,  95;  as  basis 
for  legislation,  121. 
Industrial  interests,  in  contem- 
porary life,  42;  and  the  im- 
migrant, 71;  germane  to  gov- 

241 


ernment,  122;  and  internation- 
al peace,  113. 
Industrial  development,  changes 
in,  124. 

Illiterate  children  in  the  U.  S 
163. 

Internationalism,  23;  socialism 
based  on,  U4;  Mazzini's  ad- 
dress on,  115;  active  and 
tangible,  237. 

International  Peace  Conference 
in  Boston,  237. 

Interparliamentary  union  for  in- 
ternational  arbitration,  6. 

Institute  of  International  Law, 


James,  William,  24. 
Jefferson,  Thomas,  31. 
Justice,  the  larger,  236. 
Juvenile  Courts,  80;  Denver,  81; 
parental   attitude   of,  82. 

Kant,  23. 

Kelley,   Mrs.   l^lorence,  153. 
Lecky,  222. 

London,  Charles  Booth,  maps  of, 
87;  government  of,  88. 

Machinery    and    the  industrial 

situation,  149, 
Mazzini,  29,  115. 
Militarism,  versus  industrialism, 
28;  police  department  a  sur- 
vival of,   55;   mediaeval  city 
founded  on,  207;  negative  re- 
sults of,  220. 
Mitchell,  John,  126,  146. 
Morality,  class,  27;  group,  124, 
145;  antiquated  codes  of,  210; 
village  standards  of,  215. 
Morley,  John,  118. 
Morris,   William,  203. 
Municipal    government,  admit- 
ted failure  of,  31;  full  of  sur- 
vivals, 34;  two  points  of  rapid 
development    in,    79;  ignores 
interests   of   average  ,citizen, 
85;    failure   to   provide  play- 


INDEX 


grounds,  176;  indifference  of 
citizens  to,  183;  woman's  tra- 
ditional activities  in,  184. 

Natvtralization,  42;  rests  on 
laws  of  1802,  43;  brokerage 
in  papers  of,  46,  71;  test  not 
contemporaneous,  42. 

Non-resistance,  a  misleading 
word,  8;  non-resistance  strike, 
232;  aggressive,  233. 

Patriotism,  belief  that  war  en- 
genders, 18;  a  newer,  arising, 
19;  founded  on  sacrifice,  74; 
taught  too  formally,  75;  primi- 
tive core  of,  91;  founded  on 
war,  140,  217;  bound  in  trap- 
pings of  the  past,  214. 

Peace,  dynamic  versus  dogmatic, 
7;  predicted  by  Isaiah,  237. 

Perris,  G.  H.,  231. 

Play,  a  social  stimulus,  1 7  ^ ; 
develops  self-government  and 
discipline,  173;  attitude  of  en- 
lightened city  government  to, 
178. 

Politician,  professional,  produced 
by  mechanical  government,  52; 
friend  of  the  vicious,  56;  ap- 
peals to  human  sentiment,  59; 
first  friend  of  immigrant,  72; 
understands  people's  hopes,  79; 
attempts  to  control  strike,  103. 

Protective  legislation,  aggressive 
aspect  of  the  newer  humanita- 
rianism,  28;  U.  S.  deficient  in, 
152. 

Reformer,  contemptuous  attitude 
of,  49;  sweeping  condemna- 
tions of,  57;  alliance  with 
business  interests  of,  61. 

Revolutionary  War,  36,  37. 

Revolutionist,  232. 

Repressive  legislation,  54;  human 
element  in,  55. 

Royce,  Josiah,  32. 

Ruskin,  235. 


Russia,  68;  the  mir,  67;  atti- 
tude toward  workmen,  122;  the 
army  of,  230. 

Self-government,  difficulties  and 
blunders  of,  32;  crux  of  local, 
35;  skepticism  for  ideals  of, 
39;  must  deal  with  unsuccess- 
ful, 62;  scope  of,  63;  forms 
of  democracy  for,  88;  immi- 
grants' first  lesson  in,  95; 
clearly  not  y^t  attained,  108; 
popular  government  oppressor 
of,  104;  might  profit  by  in- 
dustrial experience,  121. 

Shakespeare,  9. 

Social,  evolution,  2ii;  morality  in, 
213. 

Socialism,  based  on  internation- 
alism and  industrialism,  114. 

Socialist's  attitude  to  present 
government,  86. 

St.  Francis,  21. 

Teamsters'  strike,  war  element 
in,  132;  employers'  position  as 
to  arbitration  in,  134;  alli- 
ance between  employers'  and 
unionists'  offices  in,  135;  in- 
experience of  merchant  em- 
ployers in,  136;  social  results 
of,  141. 

Tolstoy,  3,  4»  209,  225,  230,  231* 
233,  234. 

Tribal  law,  11. 

Tribal  Morality,  18. 

Trades  unions  imitate  city  gov- 
ernment, 94;  teach  immigrants 
self-government,  95 ;  power 
for  amalgamation  of,  97;  atti- 
tude toward  violence,  98; 
causes  for  loss  of  sympathy 
for,  in  Stock  Yards  Strike, 
loi;  human  appeal  in,  102; 
gratitude  of  immigrant  toward, 
107;  devotion  to,  might  be 
turned  to  national  life,  118; 
organized  by  Russian  govern- 
ment,   122;  contemporaneous 


242 


INDEX 


movement  diflScult  to  judge, 
125;  success  not  sole  standard 
of,  128;  present  a  time  of 
crisis  for,  129;  attitude  to- 
ward strike,  130;  social  result 
of  strike  on,  144;  struggle  for 
recognition,  145;  attitude  to- 
ward improved  machinery, 
148;  uncomprehending  victim 
of,  195. 

War,  defence  of,  26;  prophecy 
of  subsidence  of,  23;  moral 
equivalent  for,  24;  ideals  in 
peace  confusing,  110;  phrase- 
ology of  new  union,  130; 
crime  traceable  to  Spanish, 
143;  new  social  problems  not 
to  be  settled,  206;  attempts 
to  justify  by  past  records,  210; 
substitutes  for  virtues  of,  217; 
contrast  between  labor  and, 
234. 

Warfare,  cost  of,  4;  customary 
method  of  settling  labor  dis- 


putes, 135;  recognition  of  good 
in,  212;  civilization  substitutes 
law  for,  219;  ideals  of  labor 
substituted  for  those  of,  224; 
disappearance  of,  229. 

Webb,  Mrs.  Sidney,  191. 

Whitman,  Walt,  45. 

Wilcox,  Dr.  Charles  F.,  54. 

Wilcox,  Delos  F.,  117. 

Women,  duty  toward  municipal 
government,  28,  185,  208;  con- 
ventions a  snare  to,  186;  fran- 
chise only  for  educated,  188; 
effect  of  machinery  on  work 
of,  190;  increasing  employ- 
ment of,  189;  necessity  for 
protection  of  working,  191, 
196;  necessity  for  franchise 
for,  191,  197;  relation  to 
clothing  manufacture  192;  lack 
in  education  of,  197,  202,  206. 


Verestchagin,  3,  4. 
Von  Moltke,  334. 


243 


BY  THE  SAME  AUTHOR 


DEMOCRACY  AND 
SOCIAL  ETHICS 

By  JANE  ADDAMS,  Hull-House,  Chicago. 

9+281  pages,  12  mo.,  cloth,  leather 
back,  $1.25  net.     Citizen's  Library. 

"Miss  Addams  is  clear.  She  has  not  been  precipitate  in  the  prep- 
aration of  her  book.  She  has  reconsidered,  corrected,  and  recorrected 
it,  spoken  with  temperance  and  courtesy.  ...  As  gentle,  as  pa- 
tient as  sincere,  and  as  astute  as  Jane  Addams  herself  is  the  philosophy 
set  forth  in  these  pages.  .  .  .  The  processes  of  Miss  Addams' thought 
are  interesting  to  thousands.  The  sense  that  none  of  us  is  living  up  to 
thebestideaof  democracy  is  upon  each  of  us.  .  .  .  Miss  Addams  is 
bound  to  receive  a  respectful  hearing.  As  a  leader  who  ever  prays  to 
lead  aright,  a  sociologist  who  is  willing  to  test  her  theories  in  a  practi- 
cal and  personal  way.  a  theorist  who  is  not  ashamed  to  own  when  she 
has  been  mistaken,  a  friend  who  will  remain  true  to  her  friend  no  mat- 
ter what  may  arise,  and  a  person  of  leisure  and  power,  who  has  the  civ- 
ic interest  at  heart,  she  has  come  to  be  prized  as  one  of  the  chief  of  citi- 
zens,'*—Chicago  Tribune, 

"Its  pages  are  remarkably-we  were  about  to  say  refreshingly- 
free  from  the  customary  academic  limitations.  ...  In  fact,  are  the 
result  of  actual  experience  in  hand  to  hand  contact  with  social  prob- 
lems. ...  No  more  truthful  description,  for  example,  of  the  politic- 
al 'boss*  as  he  thrives  to-day  in  our  great  cities  has  ever  been  written 
than  is  contained  in  Miss  Addams'  chapter  on  'Political  Reform.'  The 
whole  chapter  will  be  accepted  as  a  realistic  picture  of  conditions  as 
they  are  to-day  in  the  nity  of  Chicago.  The  same  thing  may  be  said  of 
the  other  chapters  of  the  book  in  regard  to  their  presentation  of  social 
and  economic  id^zls'' —Review  of  Reviews. 

"Too  much  emphasis  cannot  be  laid  upon  the  efficiency  and  inspira- 
tion afforded  by  these  essays.  'Charitable  Effort."Filial  Affections.' 
•Household  Adjustment.*  'Industrial  Amelioration.'  'Educational 
Methods,"Political  Reform.' are  the  topics  treated  in  a  masterly  and 
revolutionary  style.  Miss  Addams  shatters  some  of  our  most  cherished 
illusions  upon  the  relations  which  should  exist  between  the  helper  and  the 
helped,  between  parent  and  child,  mistress  and  maid,  the  members  of  a 
family,  between  the  'boss'  and  the  community.  She  takes  the  subject 
entirely  out  of  the  realms  of  sentimentality,  puts  it  upon  a  solid  moral 
basis,  and  by  a  close  and  logical  train  of  reasoning  brings  her  conclu- 
sions  home  to  the  conscience  and  common  sense  of  every  member  of  the 
social  structure.  The  book  is  startling,  stimulating  and  inteiligent."- 
Philadelphia  Ledger  * 


The  Arbiter  in  Council 

A  discussion  of  peace  and  war,  in  which  take 
part,  each  from  his  own  viewpoint,  a  lawyer 
''with  a  conscience/'  a  stock  broker,  a  learned 
professor  of  history,  a  journalist,  a  retired  ad- 
miral, an  army  officer,  and  two  clerg-ymen  of 
widely  differing  forms  of  church  government. 
The  Arbiter  is  a  veteran  student  of  politics,  a 
disciple  of  John  Bright. 

*'As  a  summary  of  all  that  is  to  be  said  on  the  subject, 
thrown  into  readable  form,  the  book  is  well  done;  .  .  . 
almost  no  topic  is  left  untouched,''— Nation, 

**What  strikes  one  in  reading  this  book  even  more  than 
its  readableness,  is  the  wide  range  of  its  information,  .  .  . 
The  points  of  view  offered  are  many  and  diversified.  .  .  . 
No  argument  worth  using  is  left  unused."  — T/^^  Evening 

MaiL 

* 'The  subjects  discussed  include  the  causes  and  conse- 
quences of  war;  modern  warfare;  private  war  and  the 
duel;  perpetual  peace  or  the  federation  of  the  world;  arbitra- 
tion, the  political  economy  of  war,  and  Christianity  and 
war.  It  is  a  notable  book,  or  will  become  one  as  it  is  wide- 
ly read."— Editorial  in  The  Boston  Herald. 

**The  Arbiter's  friends  are  drawn  from  several  ranks 
in  life,  and  they  bring  to  the  symposium  wide  reading  in  the 
literature  of  the  subject,  logical  powers  and  a  persuasive 
manner  of  speaking.  'The  Arbiter  in  Council'  may  be  re- 
garded as  a  conspectus  of  the  best  thought  on  warfare,  es- 
pecially in  relation  to  the  topic  of  universal  peace."— 
Philadelphia  Press, 


6+567  pages,  8'vo.,  cloth,  $2.50  net. 


On  many  of  the  subjects  touched  upon  in 
Miss  Addams's  ''The  Newer  Ideals  of 
Peace"  interesting:  material  may  be  found 
in  the  volumes  named  below: — 

ON  CITY  GOVERNMENT 

The  American  City 

By  DELOS  F.  WILCOX.  Ph.  D. 

"In  the  'American  City*  Dr.  Wilcox  ...  has  written  a  book  that 
every  thoughtful  citizen  should  read.  The  problems  of  the  street, 
the  tenement,  public  utilities  civic  education,  the  three  deadly  vices, 
municipal  revenue  and  municipal  debt,  with  all  their  related  and 
subsidiary  problems,  are  Dlearly  and  fully  considered/'— Ptitsbur£:h 
Gazette. 

6+423  pages,  12  mo.,  cicth,  leather  back,  $1.25  net.   Citizen's  Library, 

ON  THE  LABOR  PROBLEM 

Labor  Problems 

By  THOMAS  SEW  ALL  ADAMS.  Ph.  D..  Assistant  Professor  of 
Political  Economy,  and  HELEN  L.  SUMNER.  Honorary  Eellow 
in  Political  Economy,  University  of  Wisconsin. 
"A  volume  which  has  a  labor-saving  value  for  any  library.  .  .  .  Here 
one  finds  upon  each  of  the  problems  treated-woman  and  child  la- 
bor, immigration,  strikes  and  boycotts,  labor  organizations  and  em- 
ployers' associations,  the  agencies  of  industrial  peace,  profit-sharing, 
co-operation,  industrial  education,  labor  laws,  and  the  material  prog- 
ress of  the  wage-earning  classes— the  principal  facts  and  comments 
of  all  the  <-hiof  authorities  .  .  .  with  helpful  bibliographical  lists  and 
references  to  volumes  and  chaiD lers."— r>^5  Commons,  Chicago. 

15+579  pages,  cr.  8  vo.,  cloth,  $1.60  not. 

ON  INDUSTRIAL  LEGISLATION 

Some  Ethical  Gains  Through  Legislation 

By  MRS.  FLORENCE  KELLEY. 

The  book  has  grown  out  of  the  author's  experience  as  Chief  Inspect- 
or of  Factories  in  Illinois  from  1893  to  1897.  as  Secretary  of  the  Na- 
tional Consumers*  League  from  1899  till  now.  and  chiefly  as  a  resident 
at  Hull-House,  and  later  at  the  Nurses*  Settlement,  New  York. 
"Mrs.  ICelley's  primary  aim  is  to  set  forth  the  results  achieved  by 
the  agitation  and  education  of  the  past  decade  or  so  in  certain  social 
directions— in  the  recognition  of  the  children's  right  to  childhood 
and  to  instruction  and  to  opportunity,  of  the  adult's  right  to  leisure, 
of  woman's  right  to  the  ballot,  and  of  the  purchaser's  right  to  genu- 
ine honest  products.  Her  secondary  aim  is  to  show  how  much  re- 
mains to  be  achieved,  and  what  obstacles  the  friends  of  anti-child- 
labor  legislation,  eicht-hour  laws,  pure  food  and  correct  label  laws, 
woman  suffrage  and  so  on,  have  to  surmount."— 7%tf  Record-Herald, 
ChicaRo 

Cloth,  leather  back,  341  pp.,  12  mo.,  $1.25  not.   Citizen' s  Library. 


ON  SOME  CONDITIONS  OF 
CHILD  LIFE 

The  Bitter  Cry  of  the  Children 

By  JOHN  SPARGO.  Author  of  "Socialism." 
"  'There  have  been  many  books  written  about  the  children  of  the 
poor,  but  none  of  them  gives  us  so  impressive  a  statement  as  is  con- 
tained here  of  the  most  important  and  powerful  cause  of  poverty.* 
This  prefatory  judgment  of  Robert  Hunter  will  be  handed  on  by 
everyone  who  reads.  .  .  .  The  book  will  live  and  set  hundreds  of 
teachers  and  social  workers  and  philanthropists  to  work.  .  .  .  School 
teachers  need  this  book,  social  workers,  librarians,  pastors,  editors? 
all  who  want  to  understand  the  problem  of  poverty  or  education."'— 
William  H.  Allen  in  The  Annals  of  the  American  Academy* 

16+257  pages,  12  mo.,  (1.25  net. 

ON  CONDITIONS  AMONG 
THE  POOR 

Poverty.    A  Definition  and  an  Estimate  of  its  Extent 

By  ROBERT  HUNTER.  President  of  the  Social  Reform  Club; 
Chairman  of  New  York  Child  Labor  Committee;  formerly  head 
worker  of  the  University  Settlement  of  New  York. 
"I  cannot  delay  writing  you  of  my  profound  interest  in  your  new 
book,  'Poverty,'  which  I  have  to-day  read,  with  instruction,  with 
satisfaction,  and  with  a  deep  sense  of  your  mastery  of  the  subject. 
.  .  .  Your  chapter  on  'The  Immigrant*  seems  to  me  the  most  concise, 
the  most  convincing  and  the  most  logical  brief  statement  of  the  sub- 
ject that  I  have  ever  seen.*'-"RoBERT  De  C.  Ward,  Harvard  Uni- 
versity. 

9+382  pages,  12  mo.,  olotb,  $1.50,  net. 

A  SOCIOLOGICAL  SOURCE-BOOK 

Readings  in  Descriptive  and  Historical  Soci- 
ology 

Edited  by  FRANKLIN  H.  GIDDINGS.  Ph.D..  LL.D..  Professor 
of  Sociology  and  the  History  of  Civilization  in  Columbia  University. 
The  book  is  a  selection  of  extracts  from  sources  ranging  from  the 
Bible  to  yesterday's  newspaper,  connected  with  a  mere  outline  of 
theory.  The  book  is  at  once  a  rounded  outline  of  social  theory,  and 
a  suggestive  guide  in  the  method  of  classifying  the  new  materials 
constantly  appearing  in  reviews  and  the  daily  press. 

24+553  pages,  cloth,  12  mo.,  $1.60  net. 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

Publishers         64-66  Fifth  Ave.  New  York 


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